Royal harvest.

Here's our harvest of late spuds. 34 pounds of King Edwards. That's
about 15 quids worth.

ESCC's annual report

East Sussex County Council have just released their annual report. For the first time, it reports carbon (or "environmental') footprint targets.

There's a table of baseline emissions for 2001/2. Unfortunately, it doesn't state the units, but I think they're tonnes of CO2. The total is almost 38,000t, with schools accounting for 61% of that. Street lighting (17%), social services (12%) and business mileage (5.3%) account for most of the rest.

The good news is that their CO2 emissions have dropped by 20% since the baseline year. Unfortunately, they don't give a comparable breakdown, or say how they've achieved this - though they do give some examples.

Stuart cutting the cake.

Cutting the cake into 100 trillion pieces.

100 TB Club

The University now has 100TB (100,000GB) of storage on our Storage Area Network, and Dot Hill (our SAN supplier) gave us this cake to celebrate.

Slow travel

An easy no fly option for foreign holidays from Lewes is the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry. The crossing takes four hours, and the scenery can be somewhat uneventful. But what better way to fill the time than brushing up with French lessons? That's such a fantastic idea. OK, so you're not going to get very far if you've never learned any before, but it sounds like a great way to get into the flow and boost your confidence before you arrive.

Good News, Bad News

The good news is that Hazel Blears has approved LDC's Planning Application Committee's decision to permit Glyndebourne to build their wind turbine. Not only that, but as an added benefit to the environment the minister has added conditions that Glyndebourne should close their helipad (except for emergency flights), and take action to reduce the number of people arriving by car.
http://www.glyndebourne.com/information/wind_turbine/

The bad news is that Network Rail have decided that reopening the Lewes to Uckfield line would be technically feasible, but not economically viable. A particular shame in view of the above decision - which would have benefited the economic case for reopening the line.
http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/roadsandtransport/roads/roadschemes/rail/default.htm

Legion Parking Services

One way to make an intrinsically unpopular service more acceptable is to appoint a respected organisation to manage it. NCP probably aren't that organisation.

A while ago, I heard that Cambridge City Council use the British Legion to manage their parking scheme. I've repeated the claim a couple of times, but can't remember where I heard it. So, I decided to find out for myself.

A Google search for "Cambridge parking enforcement" found this page, which refers to a contract with "Legion Parking Services". So, is this the British Legion, or has someone been misled by the name? Well, Googling for "Legion Parking Services" turns up their web site at http://www.legiongroup.co.uk/. Sure enough, "Legion Group plc is a subsidiary of the Royal British Legion Attendants Company Trust (RBLA), a registered charity with the aim of promoting employment opportunities for ex servicemen and women. "

Whether you see this as an opportunity to support and reward servicemen and women who have risked their lives for our country, or an way to turn swords into ploughshares, it seems like a pretty good thing to do.

Interestingly, they've been providing parking management services since 1928. Blimey - I guess the job must have changed a lot in that time!