And Did Those Feet

This week Britain finally paid back our debt to the US from world war 2. War Debt Article

Very good article on the Black Death reported on Britarch - it has a useful summary of the various viewpoints very well. It concludes that there were indeed some differences from the 19th Century bubonic plague - mainly in how virulent it was and comes to the conclusion that this is because the plague was spread by the human flea.   The Shifting Explanations for the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague in Human History By John Kelly   http://hnn.us/articles/10949.html    

I found out today our application for the Museums without Barriers grant from MLA, London was rejected. The pot had very little money in it and they could afford few grants but as I had gone on the training course, met the grant coordinator I was pretty sure we would be successful, but I think I left the project too open-ended and lost out to more tightly constrained projects. I wanted a visit by the consultants to help us decide how best to concentrate our efforts to improve access. The application was that simple - obviously too simple that they did not think we had put any effort in. Very annoyed.

A huge windfarm planned for the Thames Estuary called the London array will provide 1% of the UK energy requirement. For more details: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/6188133.stm

The LDA - London Development Agency divides London up as follows: I have no idea who made these decisions but clearly some are not so obvious. For example, Southwark is in the Central Region but the City is in the Eastern Region given that all the bridges across the Thames in Southwark join up with the City this seems crazy! A report which discusses the issue of dividing up London can be seen here. Central sub-region Camden Islington Kensington & Chelsea Lambeth Southwark Wandsworth Westminster North sub-region Barnet Enfield Haringey Waltham Forest East sub-region Barking & Dagenham Bexley Corporation of London Greenwich Hackney Havering Lewisham Newham Redbridge Tower Hamlets South sub-region Bromley Croydon Kingston Merton Richmond Sutton West sub-region Brent Ealing Harrow Hammersmith and Fulham Hillingdon Hounslow

I joined the save the theatre museum campaign, and send email to everyone in my mailing list. Guardians of the Theatre Museum

30m more visitors have attended museums in the last 5 years, 6m this year. This has been attributed by Tessa Jowell to the introduction of free museum entry 5 years ago but it has also benefitted charging museums too so not entirely sure why the numbers have gone up. Guardian Article