IN THE NEWS

Geographical stories of interest from the newspapers. Get that clippings file started!

More Tsunami news. Did some blogging investigations as a result of Tsunami searches... These are all added to GeoBlogs and TSUNAMI page.

Came across a good site with a FOOL's MAP OF THE WORLD. There is also a link to other maps of the world based on people's viewpoints.

Also a link to SATAN's LAUNDROMAT, which is a remarkable (and huge) collection of images of New York (and other locations) with a view to finding the decaying and the weird and the unusual slants. Fabulous images. Could go onto GeoBlogs page, but it's a photolog not a photoblog. There is a similar DERELICT LONDON photoblog.

TSUNAMI slowly disappearing off the front pages. Aid starting to flow. DEC 'winding down' appeal: no longer going to have the same advertising effort as before.

Off to BETT 2005. Spent the day working on the E:Port stand: a collaboration between Schoolzone and Evaluate. Very interesting to see the exhibition from the other side. In early with the stream of exhibitors, seeing the queues outside as 10 o' clock ticked round, then spent 6 hours manning the stand or wandering round the exhibits. Had an interesting chat with Keith Phipps, award winning teacher for his use of ICT, and now an MBE in the New Year's Honours. Good to speak to lots of colleagues from various schools and locations.

Do you drive them to clubs, school etc ? An article suggests that parents will end up driving their children an average of 80 000 miles up to the age of 17. The parents' taxi is very busy it seems. Mothers spend over 50% of their driving time with children in the back of the car. Fathers spend 21% of their driving time on the children. Very often, 4 journeys are made as children are dropped off then fetched later. on. (Daily Mail, 14/01/05)

17th of January marked the 10th anniversary of the Kobe earthquake. Services were held in the city, with a candle being lit for each of the 6700 plus casualties of the earthquake and the fire which followed.

Severe weather due to hit Scotland again. Researchers suggest that the weather is likely to get more stormy in that area in the future, threatening some island communities, and creating issues with access.

"The Beast from the East": Siberian high pressure threatened to come over the UK, but instead it seems to be over to the East of us. It has brought snow and sub-zero temperatures to Palma, Majorca and the Atlas mountains in North Africa.

January 2005 and the Exxon Valdez is in the papers again. This time the effect is on people. An article in 'The Independent' called 'Black Death' looked at the long-lasting effect of the oil on the workers who cleaned up the spill.

The first SLN FIELD WEEKEND held at Hartington Hall Youth Hostel and surrounding villages. Report in 'The Guardian' on the first day of the weekend talked about the boom in wristbands, and the fact that others are making money from some of them than the charities. We certainly wore them on the weekend. Make sure you get yours from the various charities rather than from secondary sources where other people will be making money from them.

Report on the huge mark-up apparently added to the cost of spectacle frames by opticians.

Easterly air stream being brought across by High pressure to the north of the UK gives a 'promise' of snow. Let's hope.... As it happens, North Norfolk ended up being wet and cold and we had no sizeable depths of snow. Could have done with a few days off to catch up on various Geography related issues...

World population is set to rise by 40% according to an article on the BBC NEWS site.

Launch of the new area of the website: MINIGEOGS. Check it out ! Two galleries of MiniGeogs now online - have a go at making your own and send them in, or put up a gallery at your place of work. By tinkering with the VisualBasic code, you can also make them larger (or smaller) or change the size of the boxes. Be CREATIVE !

There is also an excellent art project currently running on the Suffolk coast, installed by the artist Bettina Furnee. Details of the installation can be found at the project's website which is at IFEVER. The installation has already demonstrated the frightening pace at which certain parts of the Suffolk coast are being eroded, especially those close to protected sections. There was a minor blip in March due to a power cut. Ian Murray of GeographyPhotos has put some images from a recent trip on his site, where he managed to get onto the webcam - I'll try and get down there one weekend soon. Two examples are shown below:

Both images taken from http://www.geographyphotos.com with permission of Ian Murray. Click to enlarge. Images taken in February 2005

Got anything to sort out ? - try a GOOGLEFIGHT - put 2 terms in and see which one wins. It will be the one with the most Google references.

Interesting article in 'The Times' on possible hosepipe bans this summer. Many areas of the country have had no sizeable rain since October 2004. There is also an obvious impact of the warm spell and the advent of spring earlier than usual. Trees have started to break their buds and come into leaf, and this new vegetation will require a huge volume of additional water, and will also begin the process of transpiration again. Paul Simons in his 'Weather Eye' column gave figures of 455 litres of water a day as being the transpiration loss from a full grown oak tree.

Many regions in the SE use aquifers for supply, and these are not being replenished. NW of England has been soaked this winter. Water transfer schemes are unlikely. We just have to learn to use less.

News on several sites, regarding plans to cover the glaciers in the Swiss Alps with tin foil to stop them melting. A trial will apparently start shortly. There is a carpet prepared to cover a trial area of glacier. This has now been picked up by most newspapers too.

The death of Ralph Erskine was in the news. You may not know his name, but any geographer would have heard of one of his architectural projects: the BYKER WALL. Erskine spent a lot of time concentrating on low cost housing. He was also involved in the Millennium village in Greenwich.

The BYKER WALL was an area of housing in Newcastle upon Tyne, which was meant to replace an area of slum housing. It was always in the early Waugh books as a case study of urban redevelopment. The Victorian slums were cleared away in a project which ran from 1969 for the next decade. Erskine set up his office in an old corner shop and invited local people to come in and comment on the plans. The wall itself is a winding building which runs for more than a kilometre. The idea was that it would shield the inhabitants from a proposed motorway development (which ironically was never built) and the wind, and create a sense of community, and also reduce crime. There were hundreds of different house types, and lots of greenery. There was a problem with thinning the vegetation to avoid the areas having hiding places for crime, and also vandalism. A Grade II listing was added in 2003.

There's a rather splendid set of PHOTOS of the whole area and the sort of houses that the scheme replaced at the TIMMONET Newcastle archive page. This is a great place to wander for a while and get a real sense of place.
There's also information at GREAT BUILDINGS, where you can also download a 3D MODEL of the site, and viewing software.
Kay's alternative GEOGRAPHY SITE has some very useful information on the development too.

Look out for a new article on the proposed new area of WAVERLEY coming soon.

Small article hidden away on page 9 of 'The Guardian': GOVERNMENT RELAXES BAN ON NEW OUT OF TOWN SUPERMARKETS. This could have important implications for the rural-urban fringe. It closed a loophole which allowed them to double their size without planning permission. An ASDA I go to occasionally in Handsworth on the edge of Sheffield recently added a whole new floor. Developers could now get permission to build on greenfield sites if there is no suitable inner-city land. This follows complaints that shoppers are being lured away from traditional shopping centres by out of town developments. (The Guardian, 22/03/05)

The 'Metro' newspaper of the 1st of April had a story that dandruff was contributing to global warming due to all the flakes of dry skin floating around in the upper atmosphere. Was it an April fool, or was it true, as the source was 'Science' magazine ? Biological aerosols anyone ?

Report in 'The Guardian' of a theme park planned which is going to be based on the work of Charles Dickens. This will be built in the Thames Gateway and will have rides based on Dickens' novels, as well as recreations of 19th century streets. ('The Guardian' - 07/04/05) - as the article says, they have great expectations that it will be a success. Another article in the same issue was about the rate of growth in developing countries.

Striking image on the front of 'The Independent' mourning the 'end' for MG-Rover.

Another striking front cover on 'The Independent' on the 13th: "The Supermarket that ate Britain" relating to the relentless growth of Tescos and its profits.

It includes a huge range of statistics about Tescos, a sample of which (the ones with most geographical relevance) are shown below:

£1 in every £8 spent in the UK is spent at Tescos (and 1 in every £3 in supermarkets)

251 000 people are employed in Tesco stores in the UK, and the company also operates overseas

Apparently there is no environmental difference between using reusable nappies or disposable nappies, according to a report published in mid May. I can rest easy about the several 1000 I've disposed of in the last few years then...

Rate of Amazon deforestation accelerating according to this BBC News article. Apparently an area of 26 000 square kilometres of rainforest was chopped down in the 12 months prior to August 2004.

There were also 2 fascinating articles on the impact of the clearance in The Independent. Get there quick and they may still be available. This looked at the importance of the growing of SOYA.

The WEEE Man has been sited on the banks of the River Thames. He is made from recycled electrical waste and stands as a reminder for all we discard in our lifetime.

For more information on the WEEE man, and the new EU regulations (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment - WEEE)

Police burn down shanty homes in Harare as part of a crackdown in Zimbabwe. A lot of detail in this BBC NEWS article.

Apparently the database which contains details on Births, Marriages and Deaths is to be transferred to India.

Death of scientist Charles Keeling. His name will be forever associated with the graph showing the steady rise in Carbon dioxide which is usually featured in any article on Global Warming.

FLASH FLOODING North of York caused by torrential downpours at the end of a period of anticyclonic weather.

Launch of GOOGLE EARTH. This has been mentioned on a number of other pages of the site.

A recent article ('The Times' - 09/07/05) looked at the phenomenon of people moving from urban areas to rural areas, associated with 'downsizing'... The writer: Tom Hodgkinson, followed the lead of Hugh F-W, and moved to Devon. At the end of the article were a set of useful statistics, some of which I have presented for you below. Some of these would be useful background to use in an essay on this theme.

Here's a story I've followed for a while. Tescos have been finding new sites for their superstores difficult, so decided to build a new railway tunnel and then put a store on top.