Well, we watched yesterday’s summary of the Tour de France last night: quite a lot of excitement as the cyclists powered their way up the final climb, a gradient I would have found hard to walk up I think. Back in 2016 Chris Froome was involved in a crash with a camera team’s car on that very slope and opted to run up the slope while he waited for a new bike to be provided by his team car. That’s determination to win for you!
We discovered that another of the top riders had had to withdraw from this year’s race. The Dutch rider Mathieu van der Poel had experienced “symptoms of a common cold over the past few days,” and during the rest day they had him examined at a local hospital: diagnosis - pneumonia! No more Tour for him this year! Oh, boy! That’s what you get from riding in the fog!
A couple of days ago a double£decker bus tried to go under a bridge in Eccles, Greater Manchester, taking the top off the bus and injuring 15 people in the process. Later reports said 20 people were injured. This is another reason not to sit upstairs on the bus. One of the Bee Network’s yellow buses got a little battered. It seems to have been the driver’s fault; he had deviated from his usual route and had ignored the “low bridge” signs.
Then yesterday another Greater Manchester double-decker bus had an argument with a low bridge, this time in Newton Heath. This time it seems to have been a driver in training and so there were no passengers onboard. Just as well. Roads were closed and rains were cancelled or at leastvdelayed while they checked that the railway bridge was safe.
My mother always used to say that everything goes on threes and so I am half expecting to hear of a third bus v bridge incident!
In Leeds at the weekend a retired teacher was arrested at a demonstration. He was holding a sign making a joke about the Palestine Action ban. He was arrested under the Counter Terrorism Act. The sign he was holding featured a cartoon from Private Eye magazine. He tried to explain this to the arresting officers but it seems they had never heard of Private Eye! Six hours later, after being questioned by counter-terrorism police, he was allowed to leave, under bail conditions that he attended no “Palestine Action” rallies, which, as he pointed out, he had never done and would be illegal under terrorism laws anyway.
Yesterday morning, a counter-terrorism officer called to tell him he would face no further action. So he: asked: ‘If I go on another demo and I hold up that cartoon again, does that mean I will be arrested or not?’ And the officer said: ‘I can’t tell you, it’s done on a case-by-case basis.’” Hmm! Mild-mannered old ladies and retired teachers are being arrested! Maybe the police need some training.
Meanwhile, the retired teacher waits for an apology. West Yorkshire police said: “We are sorry that the man involved is unhappy with the circumstances of this arrest.” Being sorry that he is unhappy is not the same as apologising to him.
Yesterday I wrote about biodegradable plastic made from prickly pear cactus. Here’s a picture of people on boats collecting recyclable plastics from the heavily polluted Citarum River in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia.
The photo comes from this article about the plastics industry harassing environmentalists who want to reduce the production of plastics, especially single use plastics. I think it’s going to be impossible to put the plastics genie back in the bottle. I am pretty sure I have read that much of the plastic we try to recycle ends up in places like that river in Indonesia. But we can all feel virtuous about our recycling so long as it doesn’t end up in our own local river!!
More that half a century ago we were shocked to see pictures of starving children in Biafra, all stick-thin limbs and protruding ribs. Here’s a similar picture from Gaza. We need some shocked indignation about that situation too.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
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