whacky races

So there's going to be an enquiry into the US Ambassador leak? A kick into the long daisy-flecked grass springs to mind.

The Civil Service is getting blamed for the leak, although I can't help wonder about the Foreign Secretaries and their close ensembles, who would also be party to this information?

With the right level of self-interest, I wonder if it is possible that the team operating the sausage machine of one of the leadership players might have leaked this? Like *ahem* leaking the Gove cocaine story?

Let's follow the blotchy dots. It was apparently Isabel Oakeshott who received the well-timed information containing the leak, or kompromat, as some might term it. A frequent panel show guest and selective "journalist", she's got activist links to Leave donor Aaron Banks (under NCA investigation?) and is apparently paid by Belize-based tax-exile and Leave champion Lord Ashcroft, who is currently enjoying the Russian waters around Novorossiysk from the 50m yacht Lady M II, conveniently moored next to a few proper Russian yachts. Murky waters run deep.

Surely Nigel can't be far away from this crowd?

Curiously, Mr Hunt has denied his support for the ambassador's statements. On this occasion, it seems to de-implicate him.

Mr Johnson is a self-confessed user of constructive ambiguity so, conversely, he might just be reviewing the farrago of options for a political appointee to replace Sir Kim Darroch, further diluting truth to power.

Cycling through the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan

I've just been reading the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan(GESP), which sets out the developmental objectives for the city over the next ten years and beyond. Living close to Topsham means that I get great access to both a city and a river-quayed town within about 20 minutes one way and ten minutes the other way.

I estimate these times based upon a bike ride. The car driving time is about the same, given that I'll need to park and then walk into the centre. There's also the number 57 bus, which will drop me conveniently at either location, although with an average waiting time of 7 minutes it is a slightly longer journey time. Cost wise, the car parking is the most expensive - typically about £5 per session. Then the bus fare (£4.20 - Dayrider) and then cycling.

The GESP has also published several other documents, which together build a picture of the evolving infrastructure of the area. They include the cycle infrastructure, which makes for interesting reading. Compared with London (aside from the showpieces, such as around Parliament), it is evident that Devon has just got on with it, building cycle paths and painting cycles onto the roads/pavements to signpost a route.

We are fortunate to have Sustrans National Cycle Route 2 go past the end of our road and, within a few hundred metres in either direction, it turns into a dedicated cycle route, with no traffic. This is clearly an exception to the more general ad-hoc nature around the area.

The route also follows the river, so we don't get the hills going into and out of Exeter, instead a gentle pedal to the Quayside with its convenient hostelries. Cross the busy bridge on the cycle path and then we're on the south/west side with a dedicated track along the river all the way through to Dawlish (yes, there are pubs). By comparison, Sustrans illustrates the busy-ness of the commuter road routes:

And Garmin/Strada shows the simplicity of the flat, off-roads, cycle route.

There's even a choice of routes, all along attractive canalside, eventually meandering to the quay. I think Garmin's elevation mapping gives an indication of the two bridges one crosses on this route into the city.

It is good to see the considerations of 'Propensity to cycle' fitting in to the GESP plans. Draw a 20 minute cycle ring around central Exeter. That's about 5 km (ignoring hills). Then look at cycling options, now and future, with some creative road junction design and build it into the plans.

What about the road junctions? That's another part of the planning. I still dismount and walk over the big crossings. The GESP illustrates that it is possible to examine the big junctions during redevelopment and adapt them for multi-modal transport. It is a far less expensive than the schemes for car user adjustments (take the A14 Black Cat Roundabout at an implausibly high £1.5 Billion as an example).

So I'm going to conclude that this planning is good and sensible, pragmatic and future facing. It'll no doubt have resistance along the way: "How dare they cut off my right turn to the car park - its added minutes to my journey!" and pressure groups to prevent the housing developments and other forms of growth in the area.

But for this rather local matter, I'd rather be facing an optimistic growth cycle, than wobbling into a pessimistic abyss.

Stranger Things at the Starcourt Mall

Stranger Things 3 gives more Saturday morning picture show flashback moments as we watch the residents of Hawkins, Indiana grappling with things in the woods and hideous monster attacks.

You can just sense that aerial scene of a bleak dark forest can only mean one thing. Trouble in them-there woods. In the last series we had to get to grips with the Upside Down // whoa // parallel universe of mind-flaying gloom and just when we all thought it was safe to come back into the sunlight some mad scientists start drilling again.

It's all set in the 1980s so we get a vintage vibe to the titling, the clothes, the music and even the special effects. To be honest, there are more 'look away' moments in the new series and, I suspect, a higher body count.

Despite the menace, we are still all having fun in new-style shopping malls (destroying the core town of Hawkins) and Scooby-Doo style knockabout adventures, although the series production team must have had a challenge keeping so many zany characters looping through the scenes without running into one another or sharing knowledge.

There's so many classic tropes included too - everything from team bonding, girls go shopping, swooning over the lifeguard, crummy product placement, shootout in the burning building. And in the mall, I was secretly looking out for Sam Goody (yes) and Sbarro (didn't spot one). The mall movie playing? Back to the Future I, of course.

That's part of the success of this series, I suppose. It does what you want it to, rolling towards its next spot of mayhem. Headlights in the distance? Engine revving? That'll be trouble. Down the stairs into the sputteringly lit basement? Don't look! Pipe organs at the sun-drenched funfair? Dial up the menace.

Here's the advert for the Starcourt Mall, complete with VHS jitter.

Alpe du Zwift

I've just about caught up with my year-to-date cycling target on Garmin. I somewhat arbitrarily picked some mileage targets a few years ago and have been trying to reach them each year since I started.

It goes something like:
Bronze - 2000 miles; Silver - 3000 miles and Gold - 4000 miles. Last year was a bit of a disaster but prior years I've been attaining my 'Gold' target.

I still need to load the proper targets into Garmin (I didn't think I'd do it this year), but fortunately Strava has been keeping count.

I know the figures are rough and ready, fed from my Garmin head unit on the bike to various other systems. It turns out that in Zwift I'm currently at Level 11 (whatever that means) - but it does give me a chance to qualify for the "Alpe du Zwift" scoot up a mountain.

Yodel-eh-hi-ho.

tanks (for the memory)

I couldn't resist having a quick look at where America keeps its tanks. There's a big fat field of them in the desert north of Lake Tahoe. It's so vast that it looks like an integrated circuit on the satellite imagery. Only when one zooms in does it become apparent that it is thousands of pieces of mothballed military hardware.

Here is the fly-by across the area.

Then we can zoom in on just the field below the triagular section.

It is not that obvious at that scale, so let's magnify it some more.

Now they are starting to look like tanks. Wanna take a look: try this

sam the eagle weeps

The Red Arrows during a flypast across London, just passing over the crowded Mall and Buckingham Palace. Such scenes and French Bastille Day made a campaigning impression on Mr Trump during his recent visit.

He's loaded up Washington D.C. with street heavy 1980s Abrams tanks specially brought by rail into the capital, spending $2.5million to get that perfect televisual moment. Ah yes, and some wheeled Infantry Fighting Vehicles, which are somewhat lighter. Imagine the captions: "Trump tanks in Washington..."

Maybe not.

I suppose he could leave it to Sam the Eagle.

rule by distraction

I've got to hand it to the Conservative Central Party. They know a few dodges to distract people. This leadership election to take people's minds off Brexit. I know it is still there, but with myriad versions of what could happen it has become very dilutive.

Rule by distraction is a go-to move for non-democratic regimes when faced with a challenge. Create enough chaos and distraction such that all eyes remain on that. Change what it means to be normal on a regular basis to allow drastic steps to take place behind the smoke screen.

Both surviving candidates are on a spend ticket, with more obvious cynical bribery being played by the yellow clown, but more dosh promised by the other chap. Cleverly, the clown has also used the power of search engines to remove memory of his courtroom-worthy red bus lie, replacing it instead with the model bus lie.

James Wharton's campaign must be pleased with Lee Cain, the Bojo Press Agent with the wine box bus idea although Boris did use rather a lot of extended hand waving whilst delivering the lines. Wharton's steering of Bojo is pre-eminent throughout the non-campaign, keeping Boris away from Portcullis House and other sources of contamination with people who could ask real questions.

But we can still observe the freestyling Boris rolling around like a loose cannonball in the press corridor, even if he is spilling much of the wine on his own time of late.

There's the genius of the other players. Rees-Mogg, quietly sits in the background, wringing hands and spouting Latin incantare, whilst ensuring that the ERG get their way. Then coin-operated Lynton Crosby, who has (let's face it) of late only had patchy success as a campaign-runner yet whose use of dead cats seems inexhaustible. Carrie Symonds seemed to get caught up in that last tactic, being brought to the headlines when Boris needed another distraction.

Framing it nicely we get Gavin (Vito) Williamson, the bully boy unofficial whip practising assumptive closes on many of the Tory MPs.

There's more, of course, just look at any ERG or Economists for Free Trade meeting to see who washes up.

And so it continues. A parallel universe of fiction. The Economists for Free Trade have found a tame professor to write all of their reports. It is remarkable to read the latest "No Deal is the best deal for the UK" and to see how self-referential it is. Instead of research based upon external factors, we have a paper that cites its own author six times in its opening summarisation. Hired gun springs to mind.

I'll look instead to HM Government's own paper "EU Exit Long-term economic analysis". I know this is more boring than looking at Boris's latest bust-up or who snorts the most cocaine, but it if those things are ill-considered, then this is well-considered.

They start with the Withdrawal Agreement and the un-agreed Political Declaration. Then a hypothetical FTA - Free Trade Agreement - with zero tariffs. Then move to one with a European Economic Area (EEA), outside of the customs union. And then to a modelling of No Deal.

At each stage, it is fair to say, the situation worsens. HM Government didn't directly include 'As-Is' Modelling- it is implicit as the baseline. I recollect that when I did a simplified form of this modelling back in 2016, the ballpark figure came at around 9% worse off if we left the EU.

This model is far more comprehensive and includes both goods and services.

Here's the grand summary of effects. All Brexits are worse than staying. Keeping migration arrangements is slightly better than removing them. The Withdrawal Agreement, with its suppositional Political Declaration, give a range of -0.6% to -2.5% worsening of GDP. The EEA and FTA models give -1.4% to -6.7% worsening. And the Boris option of No Deal gives -7.7% to -9.3% worsening. In my simplified chart it looks like this:

Now for a bit of blind sheep theory. Instead of following pompous advice from Gove about not believing experts, I decided to take a look at a few other reports to check the landing zone.

Unlike Boris's tame professor, the analysis compares the HM Government report to 25 other external reports. I've shaded the landing zone of the reports, which illustrate that 5%-10% worse off seems to be the consensus from the 2018+ reports. There's one exception. You guessed it, it's the Boris report, which somehow goes against the grain, indicating a 5% to 7% improved position. I've highlighted this position with a small icon on the table above. It's here:

I decided to caption it as an outlier, although "Out, Liar" might be more appropriate.

paper high line

I've written about changes to the area around Chelsea Bridge Wharf and Battersea, but another area undergoing rapid change is the Greenwich Peninsula, which is the area around the dome.

Once part of my commute to work, crossing the Thames on the TfL Airline cablecars, the rate of change in the area is nowadays considerable. Spot the cranes, but also look at the plans for the area.

I'm intrigued that this area has used paper animations to illustrate the plans. It is quite addictive to browse an area well-known and wonder what is planned. Of course, they'll want to sell those massive apartment blocks, too.

The black-and-white dotted line looping around the area is the London High-Line, a copy of the idea in New York, except it is on its own specially laid route, instead of following an old railway routing. I can't help wonder whether it will really go out into the Thames, or whether they will adapt it to go along the embankment instead?

happy

I listened to Sheryl Crow at the weekend, live from Glastonbury. I realised that Sheryl Crow's second album must have been one of the last albums I played in the order intended, before all of the trixyness of playlists kicked in.

I'd changed jobs and ordered a new company car, which was going to take a while to arrive. So I'd hung on to my blue car with its trusty cassette player and that's where Sheryl lived. My daily commute in those early days was about one side of a C90 and so Sheryl would often accompany my trips to the office.

I'd hitch a ride with a vending machine repairman, take the I 95 down to Pensacola, put on a poncho and play for mosquitos, and beat around the streets like Bandini looking for Camilla.

That was 1998, and I've clocked a few miles since those days. Sheryl said she'd written the second album to get under peoples' skin. Yes, and it makes me happy.

sunshine city

It's officially Glastonbury season now, with the BBC providing BBC Radio Glastonbury as well as comprehensive coverage on TV. Not forgetting Worthyfm.com.

It's a chance to review the year's artists driven increasingly from playlists instead of physical product. Fragmentation is coming on strong. Somehow the Beeb coverage still doesn't convey the vastness of the event, with its one hour walks from venue to venue and tents all along the horizon.

The Other Stage is dwarfed in this snapshot from the stone circle and the top of the Pyramid is just visible.

This festival needs the map more than most, with an estimated population of 200,000 spead over 800 acres.

We've been to other festivals this year. Noticeable is the rising standard of the food on offer. Instead of simply burgers and kebabs, there's an altogether more street food vibe nowadays. That's notwithstanding the corporate tents promoting fizz or whatever.

It's a creeping elegance from the bookfairs and similar. Tom Kerridge does Pub in the Park, and there's a few ritzy festivals around Marlow and Henley too. This year Somerset is sunny, so no mud pictures (okay just one, maybe)

wine crate bus time

Sometimes you just can't make it up as well as the professionals. "Here's one I made up earlier"

darker arts

Boris gets Royal Borough of K&C tickets for parking badly across multiple bays outside the house of Carrie Symonds. And tickets for not paying the congestion charge. Then it's tickets on tickets, slapped across his green Previa, ignoring the little people parking charges.

They are just a small bump on his £700k income from the Daily Telegraph and other retainers.

Then there's the spoiled posh boy brat that media-savvy Symonds identified in the recent row. No wonder they put a silencer on him during the down-selection and manage him closely whilst the 120k conservative sheep take their toxic no-deal vote. It'll take more than a few pills to remediate the rampant clowning. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ERG and Lynton Crosby have it all worked out. Meanwhile, flash boys short the market, hoping for more examples of Farage's market manipulating antics.

The years of lies of bogus Boris illustrate he doesn't care. Neither does Jacob Rees-Mogg. They, with their well-funded dark practitioners, have the Tory members where they want them - condoning the big take-down.