Wednesday, 25 January 2023

NHS hearing aids with a phone smartphone or laptop PC

 Created; January 2023, Changed; 19-03-2023, 18-03-2023

Maker; Phonak, provided by NHS free with a free supply of replacement batteries, tubes and soft ends.  The Hearing Aids and tubes are handed Blue - Left and Red - Right.  The consumables and support can be got at the local library's or other places once a month at certain times, provided that you bring your NHS hearing aid logbook with you.  I do not know how widely Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Health Authority provide this support if it is just within my health authority region or across England? Alternatively, spares and repairs can be provided by post. 

NHS, Phonak hearing aids with the battery compartment 
part open to switch them off or open for battery replacement.

This blog also discusses fitness apps. cycling, walking, smartphone and other technicalities.

Normal use;

  • The buttons on the hearing aids are top to increase the volume and bottom to reduce the volume.  There is a different tune warning for when the maximum or minimum volume setting is reached than with a notification from a connected Bluetooth device.
    • Setting the volume lower is helpful in a noisy environment or setting them higher to hear more clearly can also make them uncomfortable though necessary to hear.  
    • The hearing aids can not be set too quiet or too loud they are calibrated for you.
    • The buttons are ganged by Bluetooth connection so you only need to touch a button on one side to change the volume on both sides for example.
    • The hearing aids are switched on or off by clicking and closing or slightly opening the battery compartment.
  • When Bluetooth is connected; - These instructions are the same as the NHS leaflet.
    • Press the top button for a medium length of time on the hearing aid to answer your ringing phone. 
    • Press the top button for a longer time on the hearing aid to disconnect the call.  The hearing aid will play a tune to confirm the phone is disconnected.
    • Answering the phone directly may connect or may not connect the hearing aid.  It connects to my basic Doro phones but does not connect to my Doro smartphone.
    • If you are using your hearing aid your voice will be picked up by the hearing aid but if your phone is nearby then its microphone will also pick up your voice making what you say unclear to the other person.  Therefore move your phone away from your face. 
    • If one of the batteries fails or a hearing aid is turned off then the Bluetooth sound connection will break and stop in the other hearing aid. 
  • Without hearing aids, there are sound equaliser apps. for PCs, and smartphones which you may do the job well enough.
    • If you have the tone set to work without your hearing aids on your non-Bluetooth HiFi or smartphone but then use your hearing aids the sound will sound unusual (in my case high-pitched) but what is said should still be clearer.  
  • The hearing aids usually play a short tune when anything notifiable occurs in your connected device including turning on that device.  Selectively turning off some notifications is useful but may be difficult to configure.
  • Phonak Support - Tells you how to use the hearing aids and set them up with a device but does not answer support questions you need to ask the (HiKent in my area) volunteers when they visit your area or the NHS.

 

Your health;

The NHS is concerned about your mental health and I have noticed that I can include myself in conversations once again and that my comprehension of what people say is much better,  even without the hearing aids it is still better after just a few weeks of using the hearing aids.  The benefit was immediate although the hearing aids which are excellent did cause minimal irritation, which will diminish in time.  I do not wear the phones at home but have turned up the treble and turned down the base on my Hi-Fi which at first sounds strange but just makes everything clear, this does a similar thing to how the hearing aids have been calibrated which the NHS will explain to you when you are tested and when the hearing aids are fitted.  

The hearing aids also reduce the hissing noise from Tinnitus - Tinnitus is not a disease (if you hear it in the centre of your head, I believe) but the brain trying to compensate for my poor hearing.  Hearing aids do a better job than avoiding drinking coffee, which coffee also exasperates Tinnitus.  The difference in hearing is that I can hear people speaking but now I can understand what they say, without needing to strain to understand them.

NHS provides hearing aids with instructions, spare batteries, tubes and ends at no charge.  The hearing aids if lost or broken are subject to charges for their replacement but not their full cost.  Bluetooth is connected easily too with basic Doro mobile phones.  It was not easy to a tablet or seems impossible with a smartphone, or laptop.  Phonak referred me to the NHS who in turn told me some basic things but spent some time on the other question and was unable to answer my questions on connection to a laptop. 

Using BlueTooth - advantages and disadvantages of connection to devices;

  • Listening to a video on a laptop would be of great advantage where the sound quality in the laptop is poor and low volume. 
  • Hi-Fi has no advantage you have the tone controls which do the job well.  Except if the volume level disturbs other people. 
  • Phone - Your hearing will be improved but the other person will find the sound poor.  It is impolite to seem to talk to yourself but more importantly, you are giving out discussion cues to others although you do not want to talk to them.
  • Laptop, Smartphone or Tablet - A sound equaliser app may do the job well enough for you.
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Bluetooth connection to a device;

Phone, Smartphone and Tablet all connected the sound to the hearing aids but the laptop did not connect any sound. 

Laptop; The picture shows Windows 10 Bluetooth paired to the 
hearing aids with a headphone icon but there is no sound output.

Windows 10; linked to two devices; "LE-L Left hearing aid" and "LE-R Left hearing aid" but this did not work.  The correct connection probably should be;  "R-NHS hearing aid" which works with a phone, smartphone and tablet.  But none of these work with Windows 10, Ubuntu and Lubuntu.  The connection won't or may not be completed if the hearing aids have an active connection to another device so turn that other device off or its Bluetooth) off whilst you make the new connection.  At this time I do not know of a way to hear sound in a Bluetooth hearing aid from a laptop.  Phonak via the NHS recommends unpairing (forgetting) all other devices, to prevent conflict with the maximum of two allowed (I do not think the hearing aids have a problem provided just two of many devices are active).  There are other settings within the Phonak app that the NHS will have done for me apparently when the hearing aids were fitted.

You may find that Sony Bluetooth Headphone advice might be helpful though it also did not help in this case?  See;  How to connect your Bluetooth headphones to a laptop/desktop computer | Sony UK

Doro 6620 phone;  The Settings, Sound, Audio setup, and HAC option is not relevant or required.  The Bluetooth connection menu and search for devices, turn the hearing aids off then on again and connect to the hearing aid.  Its name is; "R-NHS hearing aid" (this connects to both hearing aids).

The phone is two or three years old and there is a firmware update available for it dated August 2022.  This update is not available generally Doro tells me that their agents will carry out the update if necessary.  The battery's capacity deteriorated over the past year or two unexpectedly.  I found that the charger was at fault and the capacity of the battery increased greatly after the charger was replaced.  So the state of charge indicator within the phone also seems to be at fault.   The camera within the phone is not particularly good or required when the phone was purchased. 

USB power output is 4.5 - 5.5V at least 500mA often 800mA in practice, but for a device with a 4.2V lithium cell to be charged then the supply voltage needs to be nearer 5.5V than 5V at a high current for a smartphone.  Hence phones may or may not charge when connected to different USB devices and chargers.

Doro 8030 smartphone;  There is a setting HAC does not help for hearing aids. 

This is an Android 5.1.1 smartphone (you may need to go to google play and install the Sony Bluetooth Headphones app).  Then go to Bluetooth settings you should delete the hearing aid connections if you made them earlier and make a new connection to; the "R-NHS hearing aid" which is now available.  The hearing aids now connect when you press the top button on the left hearing aid but do not connect if you use the phone to answer a call. 

I understand there is a similar Phonak hearing aid app. for Android 6.x.  You should not need it if you have another similar app. installed.  It turned out subsequently that a hearing aid app. or headphone app. was not required, my guess is that the app. reconfigured the phone a little.  The NHS advice leaflet similarly advises that you do not need the hearing aid app. installed after it has been run once - I have found this is true even after a factory reset.

This smartphone's camera is good, and works in low available light, produces sharp but not saturated pictures but gives natural light photos a greenish tinge.  Therefore it is set compromised for natural and artificial light.  The phone is slow and when used is best connected to a device or charger because its battery does not last long.  There needs to be more space to add many apps. but you can add an SD card and move some of the apps. to it but this does not save much space.  The phone does not have a light or flash but the magnifier tool may be helpful.

This smartphone connects to the hearing aids regardless of whether you press a button on the hearing aid.  That is it operates differently from other phones and the instructions.  A workaround would be to turn the Bluetooth off in the phone if you do not want this function so do not use Bluetooth with this smartphone.

The Doro Keyboard is a bit bigger and better for that, but the shift, 123 and ABC shift-change keys have to be used in the right order to get the shifted keyboard you need.  On the other hand, other keyboards, Swift or Google Keyboards are too small but work fine.  The whole Doro smartphone does not feel finished properly, whereas the Prestigio Tablet below was cheap but does feel well finished off.

Review of this smartphone  Among many phones.
A better review of this smartphone  From a disabled person's perspective.

The basic type Doro phone 610 purchased in 2011 connects easily.  The battery after 10 years or so is worn out but will only charge if it is run down first and lasts a day.  All Batteries stock the battery for this phone. They are a well-established UK company.  This phone does not have a hearing aid setting but connects easily.

The Tablet Android 4.x purchased in about 2014 does not need a driver or an app. but connects to the hearing aids via Bluetooth, you may be offered three devices you may need to just connect to the "R-NHS hearing aid".  

Bluetooth does not connect automatically necessarily to the Tablet after the first time it is used.  If it has not connected, go to settings and turn off Bluetooth, Turn off the left hearing aid, then turn both on and the hearing aids then connect.

The sound volume was very low and only worked with earphones on this tablet.  Adding a volume boost app. resolved this issue and removing that did not cause the sound volume to reduce.  That is the app. permanently corrected an original setting even after fully erasing everything reset. 

Avoid doing a reset or factory reset on an old smart device because the features and updates for it may not be available - instead, clear the cache of any application that is not running properly.  Many old versions of apps are available they may or may not be safe to use but you need to turn off the protection against installing unknown applications.  I installed and am using an old version of Dropbox app for example.  I found that an unused Sony smartphone would not connect to wifi so it was not possible or going to be difficult to get it updated enough to get going without finding the firmware update for it.

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At the hospital auditory clinic;

The doctor took time to test and explain to me about my health, mental health and tinnitus as well as checking things.  On the second visit similarly tested and finally completed the calibration of my hearing aids order for me.

Aftercare - you will need to visit the hospital after two years and within three years to have the hearing aids checked.  After three years you will need to ask your GP to make a referral for you. 

New Batteries and other maintenance -  you can do these yourself or go to one of the volunteers who visit a public building monthly to get more batteries and help with other maintenance and basic support.

The Laptop is a Toshiba running either Windows 10, Lubuntu or Ubuntu;

issues to be resolved;

  • Ubuntu 20 connects by Bluetooth but there is no sound.  There are many suggestions but they don't seem to work. 
    • https://www.phonaknhs.co.uk/support-faqs/ -- might be useful but did not help. Despite the title of the website, it is not an NHS-recommended website.  
    • The website given in the NHS leaflet bluetooth.phoneak.com is a shopping page, not a hearing aid support page.
    • I installed A2DP -- this did not work on Linux or Windows - it seems to be a sound switch rather than the missing driver. 
    • Note that only two devices can be connected to the hearing aid.  It is apparent that the limit is just on the number of devices connected at any one time but not the total number of devices you have made a Bluetooth connection to? 
  • Lubuntu 18 connects by BlueTooth (paired) but reports that the connection was not completed and there is no sound and Bluetooth headphones are not listed in the sound output devices.  This question might help;  
    • I installed A2DP -- this did not work.
  • Windows 10;  Probably should not be connected to two devices LE_L-NHS hearing aid and LE_R-NHS hearing aid.  The R_NHS hearing aid headset is probably the correct option but this virtual would only connect once I turned off my connected phone (which is as the instructions say), but when it did connect there was still no sound. 
    • You need to install A2DP from the Microsoft store I understand but it did not work? 
    • Bluetooth Audio Receiver - Microsoft Store Apps  -- this did not work.
    • The system - Device Manager - Bluetooth - lists paired devices such as my connected phone but does not list the Phonak hearing aids.
  • I have left a support request with the NHS on these issues with my laptop.  They did spend time and asked the maker of the phones but finally, say they can not support all laptops.  They also said additionally forget (unpair) all other Bluetooth connections to the hearing aids in all but one other device.  (I have not taken this step exactly)

The hearing aids accidentally get very wet;

Inadvertently putting the hearing aids through the washing machine that was, fortunately, switched off; 

  • Take the desiccator out dry it by microwaving it for 30 seconds, squeeze it, turn it over, microwave it for another 30 seconds and squeeze it again.  More time if it is a larger desiccator.
  • Take the batteries out put the hearing aids into a small jar with a dry dedicated leave them for 24 hours.  Or use a larger jar if you have a larger desiccator and device to dry out.
  • If the desiccator is small repeat the drying of it, then put the hearing aids and desiccator back in the jar and leave them for another 24 hours.

Desiccators can be found in with sealed-packed items, worth drying and keeping some in a sealed jar for this sort of situation. 


Use and other points;

Basic phones have a good battery life of about 300 hours or 10 hours of talk time and connect to hearing aids easily.

The Doro smartphone pictured above is typical of many has 10 hours of mixed-use time and may last two days unused when it was new in 2016-2018.  The phone's memory capacity is small 8GB (4GB reported) but adding a 2GB SD card helps with some apps. can be moved to it and pictures stored there.  I added an 8GB SD card.  It is important to have at least 500MB of free space in the internal storage 400MB is too little and the smartphone may take more power than the charger can provide.  600MB or more makes the phone less sluggish and the battery life better,  so I have disabled some pre-loaded apps. and cleared their data.  Look for power-saving settings such as in the pedometer, but I found the speed and odometer app is good but only turn it on when you need it, I use them when walking or bicycling.  I have moved both of those apps to the SD card but they also use internal memory.  The Sony Bluetooth Headphone app. like many apps could not be moved to the SD card, it turned out that it was only needed briefly if at all and it could be removed.  Apparently, the successor Doro 8035 has much more memory but shorter battery life.
  • The battery's capacity is about 40%.
  • The smartphone runs for 16 hours connected to Wifi and taking two photos until the battery capacity had fallen to 30%.  
  • At 30% The phone gives you the option to switch to a power save mode.  There were other percentage options.  The Bluetooth, WiFi and many smart features were then turned off automatically.  Consequently dialling the phone did not connect to my hearing aids until the battery was recharged or the Bluetooth turned on. 
  • After 18 Hours of use, another warning appeared that the battery charge had dropped to 15%,  probably enough to make a short phone conversation.
  • A smartphone is very much a toy and takes days of fiddling to optimise its settings and find good apps. for it without having too many that cause it to slow use the battery faster and stop working properly.  Adding memory such as by adding an SD card or bigger internal memory should reduce power consumption.
The pocket battery pack and charger, above right, can be recharged from a PC USB port and the red light will flash until it is fully charged or it will charge a phone from its micro USB connector. It is charged up or will charge a device but it won't work daisy chained PC - battery pack - phone. There is a button on the top used to start charging, the red light goes out when charged, disconnected or run down. 
Alternatively, carry a charger or a USB lead to keep the smartphone charged and its battery life good.  The battery does not need to be cycled that just shortens its life but the phone does need to have the battery cycled in order to re-calibrate the state of the charge indicator.

The tablet is big enough to use as a map to find where I am.  I do not have an active phone SIM in it.  Still carry a paper map or drawing with me because although I have a good map loaded before I go out it may need updating when I am out away from Wifi and a paper map is more readable in sunlight.  I also have a basic phone with me. 


In case of Emergency;

I have not set up the emergency button on a Doro phone but it is easy and good, you can turn it off.  The ICE button on the phone should not be programmed to 999 (in the UK) or 112. 

Mum also had a lifeline24 panic button for years but would not use it when she fell, I understand that this is not an uncommon attitude.  The lifeline24 button which is not connected to the phone was only used by mum to get someone else to also nag me to visit and this is the only thing she used it for.  She argued against using 999 she just wanted someone to help her up and the ambulance crew who wanted to take her to the hospital every time except the last time when she knew it really was her end of life.  As far as I know, lifeline24 does not support the connection of the Doro ICE button to their service. 

You can store health and contact a friend type information in the phone's ICE tool.  But the phone should not have the password screen lock set up.

 I do not know how these will work out if you have poor hearing?  

Walking and cycling and everyday use;

There is almost no point saying be careful because the hearing aids will come off when you take a face mask off, they might come off taking a cycling helmet off and they usually stay on when you take your spectacles off.  They also fall out if you put them in the wrong ears.   But try your best to take care of the hearing aids.

Walking, cycling and phones;
The mobile phones' alarm warnings and rings are quite loud when linked by Bluetooth.  You may not be able to do much about it but an app. may have options to turn the sound off.

Some good apps. for traveling and navigation;
  • OS maps -  More detailed than google maps. Suggests bike rides and walks from the parameters selected.  The simple version is free this app did not interest me. 
    • This app will tell you the distance you traveled but unlike other apps did not record the route and Google Fit did not retrieve that information.
  • Google Fit - Looks like a very simple pedometer, bicycle and other exercise monitor and log.  It is automatic you don't need to start or stop it.  It will suggest and ask if a journey is by bicycle the first time you do such a journey.  It works particularly well without data turned on by catching up when Wifi is connected later which is when you can view your log of exercise called Journal.  - This app may be more trouble than it is worth but on the other hand, it does useful things not offered by other apps.
    • If you have a cycling app. or let it work automatically it will record some basic statistics about your exercise walk or ride say.  If you move by a powered vehicle it will assume no exercise has been done in that time period but if it was a bike ride say, then use Journal to add the exercise details or find the log Three-dots Edit and retitle a wrongly identified exercise by selecting Cycling for example.  It will learn to identify bike rides automatically once it has been taught.  It may also miss some exercises but you can add them later.
    • If you start an exercise using Home + and the running man symbol then change the exercise to cycling or cycling (recent) for example then more detail will be recorded, and you can pause and restart or finish.  This will record; the route on a map, speed and inclination.  It works okay if you do not pause the app but it probably consumes more power and saves a poorer record of your activity?  
      • Don't pause the app before getting on a bus ride but finish the walk then start again when you get off the bus.  Otherwise, the maps and graphs it creates will have data missing though the exercise might be recorded accurately?
      • This mode runs the battery down quite quickly. 
      • In this mode, Google Fit - produces graphs and maps but they are less smooth and less detailed than those produced by the other apps below.
    • It's over simple control which means you have no control over the mode the app is working in it seems, confused me for a while.  It turns out that enough things are covered.  It took me a while to get used to the app. for example "Cycling (recent)" does not mean restarting an old log but "recent" means doing something you have done before again.
    • If you do not add and remove cycling apps it is very good.  It is also good if you switch bicycling apps but I do not know how it measures and scores points, for example, a ride on a vintage bike would be comfortable and easy but hard work on many modern bikes. 
      • If the app. does not seem to work properly try clearing the cache otherwise there is help on the web. Restarting the device may help it is a good step to take after you make a significant change.

  • Pedometer - walking app. simply records walking distance and the number of steps when moving.  It presents a graph of steps by time.  Use the power save mode or it will run the battery down.
  • Bikeometer - Free is a good speedometer that works without fuss and summaries statistics and can save history.   It is accurate when compared to my bicycle speedometer using a sensor and magnet on the wheel.
  • Bike Tracker - Free is a good speedometer but additionally, it probably shows you a map if you have internet access when you are moving.   I don't recommend this.
  • Strava - As with other apps maximum and average moving speeds can be saved and looked at in detail from their website.  The free version does not include route planning and does not have adverts.  There is a linked website but this allows access to save rides maps.  The app has different map viewing modes 2D, 3D, and satellite overlay which impresses at first but does not improve the app.  
    • The free version allows you to save your ride record to the website for easy viewing but does not let you plan a route.
  • Cyclers - For walking and cycling - the free version randomly posts adverts but these don't intrude in a way that stops anything working.   Records speed, top speed and route taken, plus it can plan your bike route but simply tell it where you want to travel between.  You can also use the website to plan a route but it does not load the route to your smartphone automatically you can download a copy to your smartphone (I did not manage to do this) or use a phone QR reader to move the plan to your phone app. this works easily.
    • The paid-for version also allows you to edit the map it creates for you - I read.
    • This app is slightly more cluttered. 
    • There is no data connection between the app and cyclers.app website.
  • Ride with GPS - combines cycle maps and speedometer plus route planning that you can guide a little.  Basic is free and can connect the makers of the apps website dashboard of your use and plan rides is very good but it won't let you push the route down a footpath I found.  There are no adverts but the app tells you what is not available unless you chose to pay, there are enough free features for it to be useful anyway. 
    • One or two of the features possibly saving a profile picture of my bike on the website or planning a route caused the app to crash.  Removing those resolved the issue.  I found could creating the plan again seems okay.
    • Even so, it was helpful to be able to reinstall, log in and thereby reload some of my settings.
    • Ride with GPS tell me that they can not update the app further and that it would work with Android 10 but will work more slowly with 6 but my Doro only runs Android 5.  Consequently, there will only be limited function.
    • The free version lets you use one map.  This is a good size area and is adequate.
    • If this app had worked on my smartphone it would have been the best. its features which are good are well thought out making it a bit complicated.  There is no unnecessary clutter it is as plain and simple as such a full-useful feature app could be.
    • This app eventually worked okay if I did not use all the features, as advised.

More cycling apps.

A bicycle dynamo would charge a regular phone if not running the lights but would not charge a smartphone but could slow down the rate that its battery runs down.  Some of the design ideas will take and deliver more of the available power from a bicycle dynamo than is normally taken.  A similar electronic device may not be available already but would be expensive to develop?

These apps have nothing to do with health and hearing but I have been able to more accurately tell which of my bikes is better than the other they are not they are different.  Particularly give speed comparison as well as what I perceive road holding, feel and comfort. 
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Wednesday, 2 November 2022

The threat of limited nuclear war in Europe conflict and misunderstanding are cultivated

 ++ DRAFT ++         Created; 02-11-2022, changed; 18-03-2023, 20-03-2023

The threat of limited nuclear war in Europe has returned, it never went away but we could instead allow and encourage arms conversion to peaceful uses.  Teach children to resolve their conflicts and cultivate peace between our own and the people of the world.  Appreciate good things such as our health and social services but fund them better to built-in slack for reserve and for better working conditions, rather than be one of the cheaper in the first world.  Rediscover our ability to maintain and enjoy things made to last instead of being thrown away and so harming the environment and making us less empowered because we are less able to make and fix things.  Running the military at such a high level of capability as we do in the UK is wasteful and war and that industry is dirty.

Engineering can create things that are good for your health have excellent function and do the least harm to the environment if well used;

Four-speed variable gear hub of my 1946 Lenton sports, Raleigh bicycle.  The bike is very comfortable, light to pedal, and fast with very good road handling made to last 100 years.  Made to be serviced by its owner or bike shop with parts that last but if faulty replaced at no cost by Raleigh forever.  Compared to modern bikes this bike uses stainless steel or good steel that tends not to rust.  The bike was not made by a specialist maker but by Raleigh the biggest bicycle maker in the world at this time.

This blog hopefully does not pull its punches but consequently, might be as wrong as the received or implied information given by the media. We are in a sea of countries involved in conflict and arms sales, lenders with bad motives,  trying to pick the least bad.  I hope it leaves you seeing that some of your questions are shared by others.  Please comment below if you wish.  
 

War and conflict have become more inhumane but always a profitable business for the UK particularly; 

  • Battles changed from hand to hand, and the aggressors could see each other and understand what they were doing.
Archbishop Desmond TuTu said  “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land.  They said:  ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes.  When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”,
 
  • To, from a distance so the fighters did not see each other face to face close up such as from the air but counting aircraft shot down and deaths recording the numbers using paint on the aircraft.  Picture of a World War 2, B17 Bomber,
At the same time, mothers on both sides of the war will be telling their children to pray for their soldiers and airmen.  But don't their prayers cancel out?  There is an important lesson to learn about gentle talking using kind words but really meaning killing.
  • To remote by, missiles and long-range nuclear weapons despite such weapons being of mass destruction being illegal and now declared illegal internationally, a picture from the film Dr Strangelove illustrating how gun-ho the military was and are for war,
Believing in a God or Gods or none is neutral but the churches and religions mostly support the establishment.  We have quaint rules of war and laws of shivery in which lip service is given, but weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons are illegal but these international laws are disregarded (circumvented which is called not ratified by governments) and mass destruction with them is planned, sadly.
  • To killing and destruction by programmed robot machines such as a drone. Although Prince Harry spoke of his killing 25 people in January 2023 a soldier's primary job is not often spoken of and his actual job is probably selling weapons and taking from others by force.  Death, destruction and pollution are understated and swept aside under the term collateral damage. 
It is said by the military on the front line that fighting a war is the most exhilarating thing they do in life.  That sounds addictive and many leave but get into trouble with the law in civilian life and struggle with poor mental health.  Camping and living in the woods using available resources and receiving visitors is very healing for some of them.
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Life on Earth is just a thin smear on the surface and in a little of the atmosphere above it


 I do not believe that Humans are the centre of the universe or should expect any divine or alien to come and put things right for us we must do as all nature has done evolve or learn, cooperate and support life on Earth rather than take from excessively and poison our environment.

The greenhouse effect is where sunlight is converted into infrared light when it hits the ground.  The infrared light then is trapped by greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere which causes the Earth's temperature to increase.  The more greenhouse gasses there are the wider the wavelength band that captures heat thereby trapping more heat.  The system has a lot of positive feedback making the heating cause more greenhouse gasses and more heating or cooling causing ice that reflects the light causing more cooling. 

Appreciate that, by chance, and for a long time, the planet has been right for life to develop eventually symbiotic relationships so that life now more and more but just about keeps the planet's environment stable for animals to develop and life to inhabit the land.  That is despite the sun being three times hotter than when life started on Earth and the orbit of the Earth being unchanged.  With by chance natural things such as having an atmosphere and a magnetosphere and more recently developing Gaia systems become significant means of temperature control over what would have happened without life.

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Conflict and misunderstanding and high wastage are cultivated;


It is evident that more and more misunderstanding is being sown between people, than was the case 50 years ago, people are more remote from war, particularly because it has not been on or close to our homeland unlike World Wars one and two, which are a long time ago now.  Fewer red poppies are worn but not many white poppies have ever been worn since the 1920-1930s when a large percentage of the population chose to state their pacifism.  King George V said the starving people in Europe should be fed and supported by wealthy nations, such a policy could have averted the rise of Hitler and the second world war and is a similar policy to the USA's new deal that rescued their very poor eventually.  American nuclear weapons in Europe are described as for a Limited War, Strategic, Theatre, or Tactical but are unlikely to be limited to just UK and Europe.  These types of nuclear missiles can be set smaller (low yield) is misleading they are still very big.  Nuclear winter would more easily be the outcome than thought in the 1980s and would be triggered by 40 warheads which could be launched by one of the missiles from a British nuclear submarine with the consent of the USA. 

https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/threat-nuclear-winter

Little tolerance of diversity by us is very dangerous, and the demise of Soviet Russia led to the loss of competition between sciences and all things of different ideologies is a bad thing.  Similarly, the might is right, culture and law restrictive in our own countries harmful to us.

In a conventional sense, because they cannot be used without leading to catastrophe, US nuclear weapons since the 1980s based in places like Germany had no counter-response to them by the USSR.  In the 1980s Perishing 2 was deployed in Germany and had a flight time of just five minutes to their targets in the USSR.  USSR's reply would take 20 minutes to land in the USA on their targets, the old Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles USSR used to have taken a number of hours to fuel first unlike the sold fuel ICBMs USA had.  Similarly, Cruise missiles would fly for a number of hours undetected and then have a very high chance, as all the other new US weapons had, of destroying nuclear missile silos that had not already launched missiles (called silo kill capability of 99%, the highest rating that can be given).  USSR also developed SS20 missiles similar to cruise missiles, but these could not retaliate against the USA but only against us in Europe and the UK but with very high accuracy similarly.  A victory for the peace movement was that Cruise missiles were withdrawn and Greenham Common returned to the UK's ownership, but that was a hollow victory, parts were reused, and many more mobile ground-launched missiles were deployed in the 1990s to Europe. 

It is still very silly logic, to be pushing the Russian Federation, whose government seems with good reason to be nervous, to the brink of collapse.  14 countries with US-controlled weaponry pointing at it and many nuclear weapons.  Arms reduction did occur during the 1990s although new weapons were then brought to Europe then and over the past decade.  The number of US nuclear weapons has been increasing in Europe again particularly so in 2022 other weapons continue to be added escalating the war in Ukraine. 

NATO was formed in 1949 but the USSR was refused entry and they subsequently formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955.  At this time the UK was replacing its Empire with local management and to some degree self-determining governments there had been a history of British rule being corrupt therefore less profit returned to Britain.  Mostly control over much of the world was to replace force with manipulation using the ownership of money lent backed up by a considerable threat from armed forces, local uprisings such as Gandhi's peaceful uprising in India, were allowed to proceed and managed to go the way the British wanted no doubt? 

The Soviet Union policed its own countries sometimes using armed forces the same happened in the UK and Europe until the Good Friday agreement in Ireland (1998), with various disobedience in Europe handled by the country's armies.  Old resentment turned into a civil war within former communist countries during the late 1990s so the UK armies intervened.  I am told the USA interfered and caused more trouble in those former Soviet Union satellite countries.  This gives the Russian Federation cause for complaint. 


In the 1950s USA had the only then overwhelming superiority using B52 bombers armed with nuclear warheads but USSR developed some Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles and had superior rocket technology. At that time the nuclear warheads were very big the tests did a lot of damage which was not all settled and compensated for, the nuclear winter was not understood although electromagnetic pulse (EMP) was understood, and anecdote says the USSR had prepared for it by continuing to use valve technology which tends to spark but not break (somewhat capacitors and resistors also have their voltage limits). The use of the star-point grounding strategy became popular in transistorised electronics would make them more vulnerable to EMP.  In 1963 agreement was made to stop testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere by USA and USSR, this of cause does not resolve the question of why every other country should not have nuclear weapons to make them also so-called safe?  A comprehensive test ban treaty never came into force, but no major country has carried out nuclear bomb tests since the 1990s.  Finally, nuclear weapons became illegal in January 2021.  But some countries have not complied with this international law, and there had been many steps leading to this such as an international judgement in 2000 by World court judges that could not foresee a legal use of nuclear weapons.  No First Use, A campaign to have countries state that they will not use nuclear weapons first has been running for many decades but personally, I don't rate the statement useful but is an acceptance of international law-breaking and a terrible and pointless revenge. 

When USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979-1989 they also built hospitals and schools, but this reparation, which is comparable to what happened following the World War 2 is now slow and minimal following more recent invasions of other countries by the USA and UK.  In either case, the invasions are not welcomed however they a portrayed in the various media.  Soviet way of looking after the little people, those become comfortable, they see what others have and want it, but it does not follow that they get it or that they leave for better wealth either.  The USA has given money to bad organizations such as the Taliban in various countries in order to break the governments and then fought against those organizations.  When people do move as a consequence of war, they have to then work hard for few comforts or have no work or comforts and under local adversity often.  But in the UK by choice of people (voters), our own people are said to be lazy, but this is not necessarily the correct analysis of cause the system keeps people busy unnecessarily or people are taught what they can't do and feel powerless and helpless as well.  Sadly though people are divided amongst themselves, not seeing a common cause.

My personal view which is not widely said or admitted to is that US President Trump (2017-2021) held the USA's military back from interference using negotiation and meeting with leaders instead, such as Kim Jong-un of North Korea, and Vladimir Putin of Russia.  His period of less interference by the USA in the world allowed important international peace treaties to also be signed.  The problem is Donald Trump's vulgar and offensive manner, and his aggressive business reputation has been used against him by those whose intentions are worse.

President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) is widely recognised as kind and a peacemaker in the world, but nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe for war under his feet (whilst he was in office).  Similarly, President Barack Obama (2009-2017) promised much but he seemed to have been too nice despite getting a Nobel prize he proved to be ineffective.  Princess Dianna's campaign to ban landmines was effective after her death,  Olof Palme the former Swedish Prime Minister's Commission to make a nuclear-free zone in Europe the proposal was well supported by other countries but got little attention from weapon-controlling countries.  Various Generals around the world have been against nuclear weapons for decades.  Earl Mount Batten had switched from plotting against the Labour government, as some unproven Soviet threat, to being vehemently against nuclear weapons (1976 and 1979 respectively). 

Military spending boosted more than health, education, environment or overseas aid – Global Campaign on Military Spending UK (demilitarize.org.uk)

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Watching posts on Facebook people are often quoted out of context, that is the quote and the author's name are used in a way not meant when it was originally said.  That is people do what they criticise tabloid journalism of.  A good journalist and editor will only use the sentences you use in the context they were used in.  If you speak to a journalist you need to listen to what you say to the journalist, ask them to read it back and ask them to let you correct what you said.  It is true though that journalist blame editors for twisting their stories and local government will appear to be portrayed as bad even when they have not been bad.

  1. You make small changes if you respond to the consultation.
  2. Not enough people do respond to the consultations and then those systems of government deteriorate with lack of use. 
  3. Lead to systems of government.  People call it the system as run by, Lizards, or a Medieval religion-based secret group of vastly wealthy - I think it is more likely cultural momentum such as corruption of us by work, corruption due to cynicism, accumulation of money, addition to manipulation, and power.
  4. The media do not work for us well all the same.
Mohamid Ali (Cassius Clay) told Parkinson in one Parkinson programme on TV that Africans should stay in Africa, but in quite a non-racist way he explained that if there are a thousand white snakes coming for you and 100 of those were not racist but liberal types you are still in trouble for the majority.   Used another way as Enoch Powell did when he spoke of rivers of blood when his party was promoting immigration of black African-decent people from the Caribbean to run the services in the UK.  Prior to both speeches, Raleigh and its employees had turned around its racist employment policy into a notably mixed-race employer during the 1960s.  The UK was changing Unions did not only protect white people's jobs any more. 

Mohamid Ali's point is of no use when the occupiers are in majority and are taking from the indigenous people, or taking from the environment in an unstable way.  They have nowhere to run to. 

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People are losing the ability to talk, debate and listen;
In one of the big shops in Tunbridge Wells the guy on the till was playing a game involving names of fruit and veg via the shop's internal radio communication system, this is fine, there are many well-educated people being creative outside of work.   I find that all till operators are polite, will spend a momentary time of day to comment and assist with your buying, and draw people to their till consequently.  The automatic machines don't do that, and I don't like them, but my mum used to like them, if you re-scan enough times the machine beeps, a manager runs about, and my mum then goes to the till and complains about the machine not working leaving the store with a big naughty grin.   The machines are used even when there are checkouts free and some people say they like them - I think this a sign of cultural change to people feeling they are isolated individuals rather than social chat on the bus times, in it together for a long time ago.

Social skills, working and playing in cooperation are important, but I see less and less of them.  The Labour Party, and the Unions, used to make a point of teaching parliamentary rules of order, but I observe this is much less so everywhere.  I get the impression that the Parliamentary Conservative government are in a bad state with very public argument, but this makes news and the media of cause like to promote that regardless of how harmful it is, and counter to any duty to scrutinise and improve government.  I do not think the Labour Party is in a healthy state it lets itself be bounced into expelling people when they quote historical truths and support oppressed people in their own homelands such as Palestine.  The leaderships of significant political parties self-sensor more strictly than if they were challenged by reasoned argument.  By comparison, United States American citizens (when I visited New York) use British Roberts Rules of Order widely and these rule books can be purchased easily. 


People use phones and become hurt by discussion and debate rather than parting as friends who don't agree.  Girls and boys won't stop and ask a stranger for directions to a place they can't find, was an example I was given.  The teenager can get stressed about doing so.  Some of this is down to parental pressure on teaching.  Schools should give a general education, but they don't, one of the problems identified in the 1980s when the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament advocated peace studies, teaching children to work and play and how to resolve conflict with each other.  Then the students need to gain a general education, have leisure time for their interests, and assimilate lessons,  but less of what is expected of them so that they don't fail or feel unnecessarily disappointed regardless of their prosperity in due cause.  I started work in 1975 when more so if you could do the job, you got the job and I have been an electronics design engineer qualified with 7 CSEs (GCSEs), and BTEC HND learnt day release at a technical college.  I could have left college my course tutor advised and gone to university.
 
The problem with teenage children being too shy to ask directions I was told of.   I observe that different classes and wealthy people behave differently plus children are not necessarily brought up in a diversity of children with good or poor health, ability or wealth.  Children are brought up and educated separated and so limited in ability in the subjects they and their parents have chosen to avoid.  That is the children do not leave school with a general education with or without some specialisation from home.

Populist Government and Media

East Kent such as Maidstone there is a high number of junk food outlets, by comparison, on the South coast such as Hastings there are a lot of independent excellent-quality food outlets and their prices make them better value.  Vegan is much more available on the South coast, West Kent than East Kent and the Southeast coast.  I do not find much difference in sociability, people chose to wear a tougher look in East Kent if someone starts a conversation adults may or may not join the conversation.

There is a working-class conservatism which tends to wish for no change but is led to much change, eating meat and suffering the medieval diseases of the royalty for example.  In Dover, Kent  I found considerable resentment to the badly designed road building that had happened cutting off the town, widescreen TV next to the Roman Villa, the museum with the oldest ship in the world, castles and forts in the hills surrounding and should be and once was the gateway to England once all very spoilt.

In the 1950s TV used to cultivate the best but now plays on the worst too often both here in the UK and in the USA.  It is not surprising that Momentum Labour did not get elected in 2019 though the movement was evidently very popular with the biggest party membership in Europe, I think they would have spread kindness,  hope and appreciation of better things as had been the general policy in the 1950s.
 

Switching from hands-on making things to profiting from others' work called financial services; 
 
Concord (symbolised the white heat of technology up until the 1960s and 1970s) Sydney Airport from aircraft window 1992.

I am an engineer so perhaps I don't fit in as well as I did in the times when I grew up in the 1960s and 70s the White heat of the technology era.  Financial services create money without doing work, money is created when paid back then interest is owed which is money that never existed before and can't be paid back so it is necessary for banks to write off debt periodically.   The continual devaluation of money creates profit at the cost of you me and the rest of the world.
Super regenerative radio.  Many of the home-constructed radios made during the 1920s were similar to this design 
but used diode and triode valves.  Point contact diodes had been invented but were not being manufactured at this time. 
The transistor amplifies the radio frequency and the regeneration is set so that the transistor nearly oscillates, increasing the 
amplification called positive feedback.  The diodes rectify the radio signal this is the detector that demodulates the signal 
to audio which is also amplified by the transistor and also adds more positive feedback.  L1 filters out the radio signal and 
carry's the audio signal to the headphones.  The circuit works well without the reaction C2 which I did not fit considering 
there was enough positive feedback when I constructed the circuit in about 1970 using salvaged parts from radios, an 
OC44 transistor and diodes were similar to OA91.  The circuit is more complicated than it looks for example the choice 
of obsolete germanium parts makes the detector more sensitive.  The positive feedback makes the radio more selective so 
you tend to hear one station rather than a clutter of many radio stations.  An Engineers Perspective - Engineering - Electronics

I have worked for small companies mostly, but I have worked for big companies and seen very poor design work at job interviews with quite prestigious companies that employ the top marked students from universities.  They also need the employees who made and disassembled things from perhaps before they went to school and know how to make things work to do some of the design work.  The understanding of electromagnetic fields which is to do with radio interference is very important and can be missing, if the circuit simply does the job without additional components and a good PCB layout, it won't do that job well.  I have also worked for a big German-owned company it was an efficient and nice company to work for and different to an English company.  I have also worked for a short time for a company that could not design new equipment any more and a few bullies had settled in to resist change that would have exposed those bullies' incompetence.  I have also seen at job interviews companies that grant harvesting but never complete the work, changing the CAD, the chosen microprocessor and many other details in order to do that, otherwise unnecessarily - this could be prevarication whilst the project is considered, which is fine but in this case, where I had had a second interview a few years later, it looked like simply stalling to spin the project out for more money, which is a different thing to keeping the project open in case something else comes to mind when the pressure is off.

Teachers, professionals, and old guys who end up fixing or making things right in the first place need to be learnt from (either listening to or watching what they do) that is the junior can learn from some of their own mistakes but need to be taught to communicate.  Ask and listen need to be practised and is an important part of general education, otherwise, head down do my job culture, would result in the work not coming out best.  The student then knows how to ask and learn for the rest of their lives.  

Consequently, the risk of war is exasperated, and the first world has exploited this to its short-term advantage;
The USA have stacked nuclear weapons, by UK's invitation, ready for war here since the Windscale fire in 1957, at that time it was not known if this nuclear reaction could be stopped.  Other European countries have them on their land and receive rent but do not all support their use or possession.  France has independent nuclear weapons so it is not threatened by the whim of the USA, this is not a good thing either though.  The Soviet Union or The Russian Federation have not used nuclear or dirty nuclear weapons, and what they have might now be old technology.  The Soviet Union have always pulled back from the brink this has given us a very false sense of security and people say it won't happen and at the same time, the same people used to say in the 1970s that Russian tanks will roll across Europe.  The reality is that the idea of looking after each other is possible is the only thing that has rolled around the world from quite old and modern civilizations including the EU and the Soviet Union.  The build-up by the USA of warheads in Europe pointing at Russia is intensive, they no doubt try to ensure war is provoked but conducted away from the USA.  I do not know if the UK will push the nuclear button first, we already break international law by having nuclear weapons and the British defence minister boasted that we have a 3-1 superiority when the war in Ukraine started.  That is on top of the great difference in the culture I discuss above, and the lack of appreciation of the consequences of war and nuclear winter, compared to when I was a boy.


I think having tied the USA into a so-called defence of Europe has prevented cooperation between different systems of government and the best of either crossing between us.  Mistakenly the right and the Royals let us think they did not also see it that way to the extreme as saying we'd be better dead than red in the 1980s.  Private letters released for example show that Prince Philip also supported nuclear disarmament.  During the 1980s Tories Against Cruse and Trident (TACT) introduced themselves to us at the Tunbridge Wells CND stall in town.  They later attended CND's annual conference but felt unable to affiliate because they would be acting against Conservative Party rules.  The Conservative Party is much more open and changed since that time although still somewhat secretive.

Whether the USA was drawn into forming NATO and setting itself against the then USSR or came to that policy at its own determination has little relevance it was probably fated to happen.  That is it probably was not one of those points in history that changes a cause of events permanently.  The USA was not likely to become isolated in the world.   

The idea of communism but using other words, Peace and kindness has always been popular. However, the word has been made unpopular, particularly among the working classes - though greed and selfishness seem to win in the end.  I suspect those with vast wealth and power fear the idea spread.  This creates unnecessary risk, wastage and conflict, and it is also directed at any system of governing that does not conform, such as indigenous peoples' ways of life in many parts of South America, for example.
  • Understanding the words but do not perceive contradictions and differences with nature;
    • I recently understood that magnetism and gravity are different things the words were known to me but I think that I did not understand that there was no other understanding of those words.  Compasses direction changes periodically but we do not fall off the Earth during those changes. 
    • If a cable carries a current pulse around a loop the time it takes for the pulse to travel between the two ends is near the speed of light depending on the permeability of the substance between them in the distance between the ends of the loop, not the length of the loop unless the loop is a two-wire transmission line.  
    • Two polarizers at 90' to each other block light passing but adding a third polarizer cause the light to pass through the path which seems to be magic.  Evidently, my simple engineer's understanding of light is wrong.   There are things we don't perceive and as a part of becoming adults, we forget that we don't perceive or can't do them anymore we will surely never know the limits of our understanding?
    • At college, I learned superposition a type of maths that is used to resolve problems with many variables changing simultaneously.  This is Quantum maths but it is not some sort of magic physics, though it is usually presented that way by populist TV shows.
    • So what is difficult about understanding nuclear weapons are so dangerous they have no use and certainly no logical reason to have them in such vast numbers?  Is it vested interests that have been able to keep funding?  It is not as if the nuclear weapons or power industries employ lots of people because they do not, so it is not job creation that motivates. 
    • A misunderstanding that I came across recently was that CO2 was not a greenhouse gas but it is a less severe greenhouse and importantly it is an easy-to-measured indicator of all greenhouse gasses.  Many gasses do good and harm including oxygen being poisonous and life-giving.  Poisonous or climate-changing ones include methane, smog particles, water vapour, in the atmosphere, ozone at ground level, and nitrous oxide in large quantities anywhere.


I don't see or trust people to vote for sensible government the BBC and the other media lead enough people badly.  There were periods in the 1960s and under Mrs Thatcher and Mr Gorbachev in the 1980s eventually governments did reduce the threat of nuclear war.  Following the fall of the Soviet Union Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) probably gave away too much leaving Russians isolated, bullied and strategically important land outside of the Soviet Union and did not negotiate the former Soviet countries be no weapons zones.  They probably had no options to negotiate with and the country fell into corruption making a lot of friends in the USA, UK and other places.  The following Russian Federation Government Vladimir Putin (2000 to present) is much more nervous, understandably, but stands up against the anarchy following the fall of the USSR, hence his stronger-sounding words always.  I have not seen a British government working and for a long time Conservative governments look very broken, the rules of debate are not used and the division apparent consequently is evidently what the people vote for.

USSR postage stamp Samantha Smith, 1985, the American girl who was invited to visit Moscow by President 
Gorbachev by comparison, a Soviet girl wrote to President Reagan, but her letter was dismissed, and a visit 
was not reciprocated by the USA.  During the 1980s peace groups were promoting writing to people and a lot 
of correspondence and visits occurred between the USA, USSR, UK and other countries.  It turned out that 
Mrs. Thatcher was very popular in the USSR.  Perestroika and Glasnost were initiated under Presidents 
Andropov and Gorbachov were lightening up perhaps too quickly, but the soviet people wanted more even 
sooner.  The relationship between the USA, USSR and the allies was good during World War 2 and again 
under presidents Kennedy and Khrushchev in the 1960s. 

The history of climate change research led to certainty by 1980 that warming was 
happening.  Before this time science was uncertain about whether an ice age was coming 
or whether a human activity, burning fossil fuel and wars would balance or cause overall 

Evidently, if governments don't govern then military interests will profit to our detriment.  The Ukraine war is about destroying the Russian Federation Government, evidently, a continuation of policy against most other countries not conforming to capitalist systems.  Some would have continued after Germany was defeated to turn on our big ally the USSR.  Animosity was cultivated against the USSR over the next three years after the end of WW2 and they were called the enemy instead.  The US military tricked USSR into excessive military expense.  It has always been necessary for the government to hold the vested interests back in doing that, but President Biden is not doing it sadly for the environment, and people of Europe in and surrounding the conflict.  I don't think there is any deep thinking, perhaps only that something seems to turn up and we survive, or that a bit of nuclear winter and population reduction by war will postpone the problem would be, okay?  The first model that worked was TTAPS in 1983, which warned of nuclear winter but also led to much better modelling of climate change, and predicted heating rather than another ice age coming, and this is due to man-made pollution.  The pollution is poisonous and kills many more people than road crashes and causes a high proportion of health services costs, but the warnings are needed and need to be headed more seriously.

effort.  -  That was an important point, they made mistakes but we think of the real home guard, all the same, 
doing their best.  That culture of being in it together was cultivated and remained somewhat true until 1980.

The myth of a war conducted under British rules of gentlemanly behaviour;
Is a myth, whistleblowers are locked up, drones kill people remotely, and so-called conventional weapons are very destructive.  So how else would you train a soldier without, making him hate, fear, be very on edge and devalue people, that is, damaging him to make him harm someone he has no reason to dislike?  "total war", had been true prior to WW2.  British used poison, bacteria and torture in their camps in the 19th century at least as much as any other country.  World War two was somewhat an exception, prisoners were taken rather than killed, and officers got treated well in prison camps but German prisoners worked on farms with one token Tommy (British soldier to stop dozens of them from running away).   On the other hand, the Russians had been known for them fighting to their own death for their country, they had been surrounded by a dozen or so adverse countries for centuries and still are.

It seems that the "civilised" support the sycophants and bullies.  But those sycophants and bullies infiltrate everywhere if you do not stand up to them. 

Evidence is that towns and cities formed without government and royalty and these systems worked well.  This is contrary to conventional theory;


Other than modern human behaviour life has found balance for an exceptionally long time;
There are better documentaries than those on TV shows designed to inform instead, on pay-for channels on video providers like YouTube.com.  By comparison, TV broadcasts are designed to annoy or entertain but do not inform necessarily.  Rather more like The World About Us series that started when BBC2 first started.  These are available on the web such as TED talks or video-hosting sites, although I do not think many of The World About Us series which brought us films of things now gone, still exist; 

Also watch Carl Sagan he says sensible important things clearly and simply.

Life on Earth has evolved to manage the temperature with greater stability despite the sun being 30% hotter than when life on earth started about 3.8 billion years ago.  About 620 million years ago fossils of the first animals have been found, like worms, slugs, and jellyfish or very flat that seem to grow till they die a few millimetres to one meter, there may be no ancestors of those found and it is possible they were fungi.  Fungi moved to the land 420 million years ago with plants and animals following when oxygen and temperatures stabilised more.  See; The Entire History of the Earth on YouTube.com explains how simpler life forms may have started more widely and briefly possibly as nearby as Mars.  Life has never been created in a laboratory for example.  The Gaia system we have and life that has advanced so far as it has, might be unique in our Milky Way galaxy, is the view of some scientists.  Life on Earth will revert to simpler forms, go dormant and peter out slowly over the next two billion years as the water is lost.  Douglas Adams said the complex life of the sophistication we have on Earth could be unique in the Universe but others say unique in the galaxy because the universe is so large and could be infinite. 

The Entire History of the Earth, a series of 26 videos

The mushroom network underground is like the brain but connects over a large distance of the mushroom that can be a number of square kilometres.  The peaceful nature of people taking psychotropic mushrooms or plants makes it easier for the police to deal with than drunk people, but those passive people don't fight wars willingly.   There are 5 kingdoms of life, bacteria are the largest group they do not have a nucleus, other single-cell life with a nucleus, plants, and fungi are closer to animals, and animals. Viruses are not living and may be the oldest form - which puts questions in my mind but there are few fragments surviving to be understood.
 


Geoffrey West - The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, and Sustainability | Salesforce
Interesting idea about the difference between life and human cities and why they are divergent.  I don't think it is right but it is worth considering as part of the understanding of the systems that have made living in cities work so far.

Don't trust the media;

Mrs May before becoming Prime Minister (2016-2019) coined the criticism of her own party, the Nasty Party, I think she tried like those before to make changes, but the populist pressure keeps it as it is if you want to get elected.  By comparison, the great orator Michael Foot (1913-2010) said in parliament to look after the little people because the big ones can look after themselves. 


Dunkelflaute!  In December 2022 Radio 4 informed us that there was no Wind or Solar power.  Nuclear power though expensive is the option the UK government are going for because it is needed in order to reprocess nuclear bombs.   But there are better options, consume much less but make it happen by policy change rather than in shallow blar blar blar (As Gretta Thunberg might say).  These are less interrupted by the weather and can be forecast long in advance;
  • Energy use reduction.
  • Anaerobic Digestion - Biogas and biomethane to cover 62% of gas demand by 2050 - CEENERGYNEWS
  • Wave.  
  • Seven Tidal Lagoon.  - This is environmentally cleaner and cheaper than other tidal power schemes.  UK has a lot of potential for this energy source.   Tidal Stream technology.  
  • Hydro - Not much capacity in the UK.
  • Geothermal - Such as in Cornwall is being built.
  • Better grid network.
  • HVDC (1 Million Volt DC cable) grids can also transport energy very efficiently across continents.
Misinformation about nuclear fusion:
I am advised; On the fusion power front, the latest hype about this has revealed the role of the nuclear weapons industry - the (US) National Security Agency referred to how this work was important for 'nuclear warhead stewardship' - code for ensuring the warheads work without doing actual bomb tests. 


Harold Wilson did not lead a left-wing Labour government (1974-1976) by the standards of the 1970s.  The Government policies were fairly similar to the preceding Ted Heath Conservative government (1970-74).  Most governments were not against organised labour although the media and the establishment were.  There are theories about leading people who effectively promoted peace but have been killed.  The BBC documentary from 2006, coup planned against the Harold Wilson government concluded the establishment believed its own propaganda though it was quite a ridiculous  Wikipedia  bbc.co.uk  mi5.gov.uk

The cruise missiles promotional video show on BBC TV in 1979 woke a considerable number of us up into worrying that the US military was leading us all into Nuclear war in Europe.  The peace camps at Greenham Common were formed, many many specialists, professional and ordinary groups organised at a local level and demonstrated.  The video of the cruise missile vehicle is out and ready to go. - it only uses is to be used first long before the opposing missiles may be launched despite what the video says.

As if to get a left-leaning green government that would limit war you have to vote Republican in the USA or Conservative in the UK.  But you then don't get what you wanted but what you voted for.   That is you rarely get the opportunity to vote for what you wanted approximately, and you won't get that by trying to second guess to counter the media spin.  It is what the consensus wants after informed discussion rather than the consensus suggested by the media interpose between discussion and mislead and misinform. 

People voted to leave the EU in 2016, despite an intense campaign led largley by Nigel Farrage saying we should do it even if it hurts, that is people did not vote for our own good.  There were lies told, the BBC promoted a subtle neutral seeming but slanted bias supporting leave,  this was also partly due to continually complaints by the pro-leave campaigns.  There were known lies about the benefits of doing so.  In the main people knew what the referendum was about and I guess some thought the UK should stand on its own feet and not take from Europe disproportionally.  Different parts of the UK such as Scotland have more manufacturing  like the EU and the value of their money would fit the Euro better than the pound.  Scotland has a more socially responsible political will also like the EU rather than a wealth and financial services base of London.

I never supported BREXIT but see that the UK campaign within the EU to break it was a bad thing.  A lot of good policies were introduced in the 1980s although many other good policies were spoilt more and more from 1990s by UK MEPs.  I also see it right that UK have left consequently.  Planning war in Europe was and is a bad thing breaking up the peace built after major World Wars in Europe.

That Mrs Thatcher was allowed to do what less than a decade earlier the establishment and MI5 had acted to prevent although no such peace between different systems was being discussed.  It should have been thought rather than buying the Cheverlee upgrade to Polaris submarine to be delivered obsolete two years before the trident submarine was delivered and launched.  This was at a time (about 1995) when a peace dividend had been negotiated and was expected.
    • The military doesn't have to report their emissions but chose to seriously under-report them.  Recent studies find US military pollution is more than there most polluting other countries and UK military pollution is more than many of the more polluting countries.

Reducing our consumption and waste;
  • I understand that despite what is commonly said large wind turbines have a much more constant supply of wind at the greater height they work.  In addition, the airflow is more uniform, so the horizontal usually three-blade types are more efficient.  But they don't work in a cyclone.  HVDC grids are expensive and technically difficult but very efficient and one million-volt DC grids can transport electricity across a continent.  But we are not going to limit temperature rise to 1.5'C so the Earth will get hotter, the sea will rise, and fewer of the people and places that feed and supply the first world will survive.   Where food is grown will move further north but I do not know if that means the tropics will become dry or lush wet like 
  • If basic income or other means people had enough money to buy and keep well-made things, then the environmental pressure caused by wastage being profitable could be reduced. This is how things were made until 1960 which seems to be the point where this changed, Raleigh Bicycles were not guaranteed forever anymore or made to last 100 years.


1946 Lenton sports, the bike is light, light to pedal, fast and very comfortable compared to modern bicycles.  The bike feels lovely 
as soon as you get on and move and it feels like it is pulling you along quite forcefully the faster you go.  Typical of many things 
textiles such as coats made to last a lifetime were still made in 1975 when I purchased my Burtons made-to-measure overcoat, it 
was still in good order but for a loose button after 30 years of use and I was too big for it.  My 1974 Timex watch was very 
accurate and robust and also lasted 30 years.  An Engineers Perspective: Lenton Sports bicycle  These things were not cheap 
but were nicer the longer they were used proving themselves over and over again.
The Peugeot Course sports bicycle made about 2000 is a more expensive bike to run, parts wear quickly but spares are 
available.  Modifications such as wider tires and a straight handlebar rather than the original drop handlebar both 
changes have made the bike very light to pedal and a lot less uncomfortable.  Further improvement in comfort to the 
Peugeot bike when the tires are a little underinflated,  In other words, there are still options other than buying a 
veteran or vintage bike, but it now costs more to live in a greener way than it did in the past.  People have used 
their buying power to make that repair less worthwhile.  It did not just happen as some might say.
The third bike is A cheap British-made Universal was made in about 1997 and has a good British-made 3-speed hub it is 
a good workhorse of a bike that handles well even with a lot of weight.  I fitted a more comfortable modern saddle.  
It is easy to get on and off and ride at low speeds.  The rust on the rims makes it good for braking and discouraging theft so I 
have done little treatment of it other than take steps to stop rust from spreading. Some of these bikes can be heavy to 
pedal though lighter in weight.  The 1975 Hercules I had was comfortable as light to pedal as a sports bike by 
comparison.  In all cases, these step-through bikes' bikes and the variable gear hubs had not been looked after but 
worked well after lubricating and in a third case, a spring was replaced. such bikes can weigh 15 kg to more than 20 kg 
this one weighs 17Kg the weight has little bearing on the comfort and lightness to pedal.  A good, cheap secondhand buy. 
The pedals on all these bikes are better than the more solid rubber type and plastic is gentler on your shins.

Evidently, the English-speaking world is more aggressive, scared of and harmful towards each other and harmful to the living systems of the planet.  Although the climate is much more stable than it was 420 million years ago when life first moved on land and more stable than billions of years earlier when Gaia systems had not formed but the chance went the right way for the Earth for life to form and maintain since the formation of the Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

Modern human's effect on the living planet.


Popular Junk;
Designed to wear out or become obsolete seemed to start in 1960.  The era was changing.

 
Sinclair Scientific - still works was made in the late 1970s but they never worked well.

Sinclair never said what they made was junk whereas Gerald Ratner said his jewellery was crap and his jewellery chain of shops went out of business soon after.  Language has more force than physical feeling and seeing for ourselves. The term post-modernism is the term for this.  Shops preferred selling Sinclair over Commodore calculators because the former was more profitable, and Sinclair supported the product well.  The American product was and still is very much nicer, very clear reliable keypad so you can type a formula without looking at the display and then press = and the answer is right.  My SR9190R is very reliable and comprehensive some of the statistical functions are complex with the different parts of the answer placed in different memories.  The earlier models had a larger vacuum fluorescent display.  American, European and other countries have maintained higher expectations for what they buy generally, and their peoples keep them longer.

The kit matchbox-size radio and Sinclair's first four-function calculator were probably okay but after that, it was very well-marketed junk.  As teenagers and young men, we talked about it and bought junk out of curiosity.  I have a Sinclair scientific calculator unusually it probably still works but never worked reliably.  So, I bought a proper Commodore scientific calculator for college which is still a very nice calculator 45 years later.

Sinclair Scientific - Reverse polish notation some said, as a joke, to put the answer in before the question but the + key was Enter and then the Function key served as equals.  If a trig function took a long time, it was wrong, and that was explained in the little manual with the Sinclair Scientific.  Sinclair captured the era of buying junk playing with it and discarding it soon after.  Sadly, how bikes changed during the 1970s, clothes made to wear out and PCs with operating systems and software that wear out get unnecessarily bloated and slower.

Commodore Scientific calculator SR9190 of about 1977, at the present time, although the battery has no capacity 
the calculator is in perfect working order.  The keys have a particularly nice tactile click, so you don't need to 
look at the screen whilst you enter a formula.  I have hardly used the calculator since I left college though.

There are choices people have the buying power we need to choose to re-use, repair, and buy better.  We could choose to look after the people who have less choice due to poverty.   Restore some of the duties service providers, Financial service providers and others had once to provide honest advice - it seems that experience is very mixed on those things.  Use Tourist Information they check to a minimum standard before advising the booking fee is well worthwhile.

--------------------------------------------------------------

These changes to a sort of maturing after the Empire, have not occurred or were stopped.  But the interest is popular and occurred with the rise of the Momentum Labour and Green Party’s 2015 - 2019.  This requires inspiration as happened and was led by people as much as the government during and after World War 2.  So, what does Russia have the first world wants more cheaply than by using trade? Perhaps it is nuclear materials?  Following the current dash for nuclear once again.

Momentum really meant what it said, and Jeremy Corbyn live the ways he campaigned for this drew out a lot of hypocrisy in people of a reasonable liberal nature who it turned out did not want those things after all.  The lie people spin was exposed.  Some pretend reasonableness when it comes apparent that they can't face saying they want to keep their cars, while others in the world have no choice but to walk and bike and only consume per person as much as running a fridge.  People have rebuilt their lies or some will have changed.
 
Criticism of nuclear power - for SGR 2022

My father reminded me that people used to be proud of being employed by a public or nationalised industry in the 1960s.  But the media criticism has been intensely against anything publicly run efficiently or not.

Dale Vince of Ecotricity supported Momentum Labour and the nationalisation of the energy industries.  If influential people support it, it will work.  If ordinary people support it we won’t hear much about it, unfortunately.

It seems that the British love having foreign companies run services so they can bash them particularly if they do what they do well rather than badly.  I observed this, particularly when Connex Southeast ran the trains in my region, they were good but bashed publicly for being French, was unspoke, but their response to complaints was buried in lots of erroneous complaints.  It seems whoever runs a service has to manage the media and spin its story well rather than do its job well.  This is the bigger issue; I think it is a major factor of what is called Post Modernism - words matter more than action.

Bruce Kent dies in early June 2022;
Where CND scored over other protests was not to be divided.  That is non-violent-direct-action as well as those who did not want to do that were all supportive.  The CND never endorsed violence racism etc. Bruce Kent visited Greenham Common and other peace camps and cut wire symbolically to be arrested but also to emphasise the point as leader of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.


In 1979 Wireless World (once the magazine of the Marconi company) published a very powerful editorial Microchip and Mega Deaths, Letters came in for about 18 months one of those came from Bruce Kent on behalf of CND.  This inspired many of us and Electronics for Peace was formed, and many other professional groups also formed at this time.  Some of these became;

 
I think the green movements thought that protest was easy in the 1990s but made bad divisive mistakes the CND had learnt from and avoided in the 1980s.  There were considerable pressures the CND office was overloaded with work and made silly mistakes but in 1980 membership was doubling every few months I think going past 500,000 from perhaps 10,000 members in a few years.

The risk to the state is that peace could break out.
  • 10,000s of the missionaries went native in past centuries when they found things better where they were and did not come home. We can choose our future better rather than let air quality for example stay poor.”

Just for a brief while during WW2 ordinary people were billeted together, isolated from the media, and there was a mutual bond between the classes for survival so that is when that control was broken over the people. Gradually the people gave that control of their lives away.  The state would not have another war on home grounds again.

A lesson from COVID;
The good things that came out of this have been the time people had with their children, cycling and a brief period of better air quality.  I develop this more in my blog;
 

The BBC has a shallow veneer of responsible reporting, interspersed with good programme creation. They make the story such as to Google when Excite was the best search engine.  Imbalance on Momentum Labour though they did correct that in the day in a token counter programme broadcast. I observe that if something they lead on does not come about then they balance it with a programme on Radio 4 during the day. 

It was shown how the Bush-Gore Presidential election was fixed with unserviced machines causing holes not to be punched, ballot boxes not collected and counted the result declared before the fraud was checked.  But in the USA the corruption is now hidden by invisible electronic transmission of data and Trump may well have had his victory stolen from him so that the US war machine would not be held back.  In the UK, Harold Wilson was plotted against by the establishment but Mrs Thatcher was eventually plotted against, although she respected government unlike recent conservative governments and would have resigned using due process if that process had been used, undoubtedly!


Poor India;
Serve us, their old ruler, at the expense of their own people.  The same is true in famine, where countries frantically export food, whilst their people starve, and British arms makers corrupt their governments to buy weapons.  First-world countries interfere and cause conflict to keep it always so, the UK is the No. 1 exporter of weapons in recent years.

Poor rest of the world;
Prestigious events such as sports events bring a lot of money to a few people in many counties but there is often a sad story of disposed of poor made homeless and thousands of workers dying constructing the facility. 

Fairtrade is a good slogan but I get the impression that only a little of it occurs?

What we gave up that the UK did well or could have done;


The best film of the 20th century is said to be 2001 A Space Odyssey, which is technically excellent.  Film producers used to come to England in order to get the best production work for some chosen films.  One of very few truly Science Fiction stories has one mistake Dave should have breathed out before crossing the vacuum of space back to Discovery.  The sequel film 2010 shows cooperation between the Soviets and Americans in space exploration which did come about in the 1980s, until then The USSR led in many areas of space and rocketry their space station MIR functioned for 14 years during that time the USSR fell.  It had an international team of visitors and holds many space records. 

What would have saved us from the Second World War would have been to have fed and protected the starving Europeans after the First World War.  King George V argued for that.  Nature is not Red in Tooth and Claw but has a lot of symbioses, hybridisation and cooperation.  Neither should any human system of governing need to be inefficient.  That is capitalism need not be Red in Tooth and Claw.  The mixed economy we had until 1979 worked well.

There has always been hope and actual peace and cooperation in space science and space fiction;

The pressure that the Soviet Union was put under by threat to it from us resulted surely in the successful rocket program and circling the moon and the eventual landing there although the Unions science was carried out with comparative secrecy;

  
First picture of the dark side of the moon taken in 1959
https://www.universetoday.com/105326/oct-7-1959-our-first-look-at-the-far-side-of-the-moon/
http://www.ancient-code.com/the-mysterious-tower-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-found-by-soviet-spacecraft-zond-3/

Luna 9 landed on the moon successfully in 1965.  Apparently, the Daily Mail reported the story and printed pictures from the moon's surface intercepted by Jodrell Bank before Russia confirmed the success.  The first pictures of the dark side of the moon had been sent back to earth by Luna 3 in 1959. And an earlier Luna 2 crashed to the moon.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z4ync
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_programme

I was wondering what NASA was doing at the same time and I looked up the infamous Papermate pen that was used in space by NASA.  Papermate launched and advertised its new pen that could write upside-down in space in 1965.  Meanwhile, cosmonauts were using pencils (sensibly) but were put down for doing that.  The story is a myth but illustrates fairly accurately the waste in military spending the intended spin-off from space research people believe of it.
 
 
The trend to stifle completion - one food system, one engineering design system, one political system
Moon race Soviet era rocket engine that was ordered be scrapped found 20 years later 20% more efficient than any other rocket engine the world had.  Under considerable more financial and cold war pressure than US rocket science lead to innovation. Russian, but not Soviet of cause continued, to develop the closed cycle rocket engine using a higher temperature Soviet steel than anyone else had and US money was launched in 2012.

Of the highest world military spenders, Britain and the United States spend the highest on military, war and hate by the proportion of land area than any other country this is profitable for a few, but it is likely that the majority of people look the other way but think a few crumbs from the business of spreading hate and selling weapons is still a lot of crumbs for us. The Soviet Union was refused entry to NATO, and it embarked on an almost crippling programme of military spending and developed an Intercontinental Ballistic missile during the 1950s. This was counter to the USA's claimed superiority in being able to destroy the Soviet Union with its vast force of B52 bombers.

People support war and blame governments that conduct them for them;

I am disappointed that so few signed the petition below and the parliamentary one is now closed but 38 degrees is still running.  My wording is very similar to what Jeremy Corbyn said on behalf of the Labour Party. I think it is evidence that people still support the Bush/Blair wars, and that parliament was correct to vote for war even if it was mostly Conservative MPs who voted for such a war.

People wanted a scapegoat for the actions they also wanted.  I think it is more likely that the media make and spin popular conversation one way then the other way.  The USA and UK invade and cause more conflict in the world than any other countries and have done for centuries.

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/parliament-make-a-full-and-unequivocal-apology-for-uk-s-part-in-invading-iraq

The Soviet pencil and the multi-million-dollar pen anecdote is well known and the problem seen of military spending on such a vast scale is mostly turned into no functional or useless output.  Atoms for peace was coined by General D. Eisenhower in order to produce nuclear warheads not to produce electricity.  Britain’s first nuclear power station, Calder Hall, was switched on to the grid by the Queen but it never produced electricity.  It is debatable if nuclear warheads are fitted and armed in reality the number of near misses and accidents and cock-ups happening should have, by now, but has not led to nuclear contamination or nuclear detonation.

Brexit Britain’s security policy: cutting aid to spend on weapons
https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/brexit-britain-s-security-policy-cutting-aid-spend-weapons

Some of my information sources; 
https://www.sgr.org.uk/events/science-superpower-or-techno-dead-end-what-would-globally-responsible-britain-look
 
 
Star Trek and Blake's 7, TV series, are two sides of the same coin view of the Federation is good when viewed from the inside 
but very bad when viewed from the other side.  Like many Science fiction films and TV, there is virtually no science in the 
stories but many of the stories portray human things more easily by being elsewhere away from Earth.

In the 1980s the Government admitted to about 5-9 US bases in the UK, but good journalist research counted about 50 military bases and a similar number of non-military bases.  The present figure for US bases spread around the world is not big but is 900 in 2022,  USA's Military Empire: A Visual Database - World BEYOND War - these are not as a world policeman or the universes oppressor as science fiction would have it such as TV series's Star Trek, or Blake's 7 but to some degree, they both prevent as well as stir up conflict.  The same could be said of UK's former Empire and present financial interest and commonwealth perhaps?

In the 1970s space research started to form as opposed to for-military gain, the two Voyager space crafts launched in 1977 have travelled beyond the solar system in that time and are coming towards the end of their now very extended mission.  Fantastic on a world scale for the longevity of the two missions and the science discovered.  The Earth can be observed looking back but it is less than one pixel.  So even if life on earth has developed to a unique degree in the Universe that does not make humans important or that any future life form will ever leave our solar system?  That is we are still unimportant in the scale of things, and what we think we know does not amount to much unless we chose to look after ourselves better.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0dcb70v
The Gardening programme on Radio 4 on 27th November and 4 December 2022 included an answer to a question about Moon Trees.   The Apollo moon landings put astronauts into the radiation of space which is harmful to life.  The astronauts took plain tree seeds with them to see if when they returned to Earth the seed would be viable.  The experiment was not continued but some of the descendants of the trees are growing in various places around the world including England.  The electronics within these space missions are radiation hardened to survive the background radiation in space which the ionosphere of Earth largely screens us from.  The integrated circuits have larger features and carry high voltages and currents to swamp the radiation, the ICs and the circuits are better screened.

Change.org - Fund Heating, Not Bombing! Slash military spending to tackle the Cost-of-Living crisis.




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