Why I believe now is the time for Nuclear!

Why I believe that Nuclear power is the only viable large scale solution to many issues we are being faced with currently in the UK.

As with any piece where I give my personal opinion I really don’t want to mislead anyone (And possibly a throw back to my days as a councillor and making declarations of interests) so I will come out up front and say that as an Employee of EDF Energy, who are a subsidiary of EDF, who create 78% of their power through Nuclear power, I would be a hypocrite if I claimed to be anti Nuclear power whilst happily pocketing my pay check each month. However with the news that inflation in the UK has hit 3.6% for the last month of 2010 I think that we need to really look at why despite the country bordering on recession the rate of inflation seems to be staying stubbornly high. The reason is that this is not Inflation in a way that we can control, this is imported inflation. And in particular Oil driven inflation. Now on the news this morning they mentioned the increases in Fuel and Utilities both of which are very closely linked to the price of Oil (The Wholesale Gas market is based on the cost of Oil) the one thing that does not seem to be mentioned in this is that we will be unable to control our own inflation (if we can ever control it again in a globalized world.) until we reduce I reliance on oil and in particular the OPEC cartel who know that there is a limited amount of time left to make money out of oil – if we Ignore increases in demand, which is something that is highly unlikely with China predicted to double their demand within 10 years, there is around 40 years of Oil left in the planet, if China and India join the US in the 20M barrels per day league (if not more) and Brazil expected to hit over 5M per day this will reduce the oil left to around 25-30 years (And imagine how much those last few barrels will cost.) And this is why we need Nuclear power now, no longer can we try and steer our economy through internal control measures when our economy is tied to the whims of a product of which we are a net importer. Only Nuclear has the benefits of stability of supply tied to being a carbon neutral production. With production of Electricity no longer tied to wholesale prices, the costs of the electricity produced by Nuclear power stations are known in advance, which combined with electric vehicles means that the costs of transport and utilities would only need to be increased in line with the costs of inflation, rather than being a key make up of inflation as they are currently.

Whilst I am a big fan of alternative power generation, One of the best sites I have seen is a field of Solar Panels turning towards the sun in Germany, and I think that wind turbines are really majestic as they swing through the sky, the problems they have is no reliability of supply, and a much higher per KW/H cost to Nuclear. Perhaps some day we will be able to successfully deploy a fleet of Tidal/Wind/Solar generators in the Atlantic to generate all of our power needs until that technology is advanced enough we would need to continue our exposure to oil. Let’s not forget that despite the advances made in Nuclear Technology a planning to generation period for a reactor of ten years has not been unheard of, all this means that if we put of making a decision of for 10 years there may be a good chance that Oil will run out before the new reactors are built, we must therefore (Again this is solely my opinion) build a new fleet of nuclear reactors now and then use the years of guaranteed supply to look for more efficient renewables after this. We could then look to build our next generation of cars and power stations to take advantage of Hydrogen power which is synthesised from water and emits water as the result of using it, but it is a long way off from being a commercial and technical reality.

Road Laying Machine

Could do with one of these after the recent snow falls!

Tiger-Stone is a Dutch paver laying machine that can produce brick roads.
Paving bricks are dropped by front-end-loader onto the angled trough.
Men help to spread them in the trough as they drop into the forming jig.
As the electrically operated crawler moves forward along a pre laid sand base layer, all the stones are packed, gravity held together & descend the sloping ramp on to the road.

This Weeks Premier League Predictions

22/01/11

Wolves – Liverpool = Wolves Win
Arsenal – Wigan = Arsenal Win
Blackpool – Sunderland = Draw
Everton – West Ham = Everton Win
Newcastle – Tottenham = Draw
Aston Villa – Man City = Man City Win
Fulham – Stoke = Fulham Win
Man Utd – Birmingham = Man Utd Win

23/01/11

Blackburn – West Brom = Blackburn Win

24/01/11

Bolton – Chelsea = Bolton Win

25/01/11

Blackpool – Man Utd = Man Utd Win
Wigan – Aston Villa = Wigan Win

26/01/11

Liverpool – Fulham = Liverpool Win

The King's Speech - Movie of the Year?

There is no doubt in mind that the King's speech is the best film of the year, but then, on the 15th of January, that would not be a particularly hard achievement, However there really would need to be a good a film to take this accolade later on.

The film is based on the true story (It has a surprising amount of historical accuracy for a movie) of Price Albert, The Duke of York (Later King George VI) and his relationship with an irreverent Australian Speech therapist Lionel Logue. The story displays perfectly the internal struggle that The Duke of York goes through as he juxtapositions his annoyance at the perceived lack of respect with his desperation to solve his long term speech impediment.

The film stars Colin Firth as Prince Albert/King George in a performance that has been tipped to receive an Oscar nomination and I think there would be something wrong with the academy members if he doesn't. He successfully manages to fill a stammer with as much edge of your seat nervousness as the best psychological thriller as you are literally pleading with him to get the words out. Firth shows a great deal of different parts of the Kings personality as he is often flits from Anger to melancholy to vulnerable but makes him inherently likable. Whilst Geoffry Rush is wonderfully cast as the failed actor turned speech therapist, he sits passively as the King rants at him and has many calming mannerisms that sit well against the uptight royal, this film is at it's heart a film about overcoming adversity, but it would be a very boring watch without the great buddy chemistry produced by the main two characters.

The supporting cast do not let this film down either with Helena Bonham Carter in great form as Queen Elizabeth (The Queen Mother) sitting helplessly by as her husband struggles with his duties. Mike from Neighbours (Guy Pearce) plays the fun loving Edward VIII whose Abdication caused George the VI to take the throne, he plays a much more sympathetic figure than a lot of portrayals, and his Nazi sympathies are played down, but he manages to portray the King's struggle.

The only inaccuracy that bugged me was that it was suggested that Prince Albert chose the name George as Albert seemed too German where as in fact it was King Edward VII (Also called Albert) who decided that no other monarch should ever be called King Albert in reverence to his father Prince Albert.

Well Done Crawley Town & Premier League Predictions

Before I publish my Predictions for the next round of Premiership Games I need to reflect briefly on Crawley Town quite sensationally getting into the fourth round of the FA Cup for the first time in the clubs 114 year history. A feat made all the more remarkable for those of us who remember the repeated High Court appearances of 2006 – 2008 a period where it very much looked like the club would be wound up. I even remember the council having to look at options for the Broadfield Stadium as it appeared that HMRC would force Crawley out of business. Now under a new owner and with the Best team in Non-League football they first knocked out League 1 Swindon and then Championship Derby to set up a fourth round tie with Torquay the lowest ranked side since the first round – Already fans are talking of Crawley in the Last 16 and surely a real glamour tie if they can pull it off. It won’t be easy but even if they don’t make it then Crawley Town can be proud of what they have achieved just as the Town is sure to be proud of them.

Anyway, onto the predictions

Chelsea – Blackburn = Chelsea Win
Man City – Wolves = Man City Win
Stoke – Bolton = Stoke Win
West Brom – Blackpool = Draw
Wigan – Fulham = Draw
Liverpool – Everton = Liverpool Win
Birmingham – Aston Villa = Birmingham Win
Sunderland – Newcastle = Sunderland Win
Tottenham – Man Utd = Tottenham Win

Few strange stats, firstly very few of them have close Co-Effecients so not really a lot different than you would probably have picked if you were just guessing. The most risky one is Tottenham V Man Utd which I have down as a Tottenham Win which the figures back up but so far my calculations have proven particularly useless at picking the correct Spurs results so either my predictions are skewed by my personal bias and I have somehow coded in the particular way to give erroneous results – or Spurs just keep losing games they should really win.

MS Access - Replacing Part of a String

Had another issue where we needed to replace a section of a string with another input string, here is the function I came up with.

to use it you need to enter three elements, 1) the String to be changed, 2) The Part to be Removed, 3) The String to Replace it.

so for example ReplaceString("This is the Start","Start","End") Where the String is "This is the Start" and the function will replace "Start" with "End" so that the Output of the Above function is "This is the End"

Function ReplaceString(ByVal strString As String, ByVal strOld As _
String, ByVal strNew As String) As String


Dim lngCount As Long
Dim strChange As String

strChange = strString
lngCount = InStr(strChange, strOld)

Do While lngCount > 0
strChange = Left(strChange, lngCount - 1) & Replacevalue & _
Mid(strChange, lngCount + Len(strOld))
lngCount = InStr(lngCount + Len(strNew), strChange, strOld, 1)
Loop

ReplaceString = strChange

End Function

Can I predict the rest of the Premier League Season?

Of cause I can't, however I have been messing around over the Christmas break and I have come up with a Prediction model for the premier league. As I like to put my neck on the line I am going to publish my prediction of the final league table now.

So I am showing that Manchester United will win the Premier League with Arsenal Second, Man City Third and Spurs retaining forth place at the expense of Chelsea. Other points of note are that LFC finish 9th and so do not qualify for European Football and West Ham avoid relegation at the expense of London Rivals Fulham in the last week of the season.

So how did I come up with these predictions? Basically I built three values based on Home/Away and Combined performance.

I then applied a sliding prioritising to these values based on the time between the game and the current date so that the previous games ratio was 1, the game before applied at 0.9 down to all games over ten weeks ago based at 0.1 these then combined to give a rating for the home and away teams, Then combining the Home/Away score with .25 score from the total combined score I applied these to the results of the last match between the two teams to come to the predictive final score.

So for example tonight’s game against Stoke I have Man Utd with a score of 0.95 and Stoke with an Away score of 0.39 these values are applied to the reverse fixture a 1-2 victory for Man Utd and so the model predicts a 2-0 win for Man Utd.

Now before I head down to William Hill to make my fortune I should say that the model has a predictive accuracy of 53% (On Correct results rather than direct scores) which may sound like a wide margin of error (And it is) but it is considerably better than the first instance of the model which ran at 14% accuracy.

The main limitations of the model are that it will always produce a very low amount of draws preferring to predict direct Home and Away wins (Mostly Home) and the scores predicted are usually low as it can not correctly predict when a team will collapse to a 6-0 defeat.

Finally due to the ratings that I calculate the rating will evolve and change with each week so even after one game the prediction model will adjust all future games and therefore the weekly predictions I am planning to publish (If I get the time and remember) will be highly unlikely to reflect the current predictions as this is based on if the teams play the rest of the season in their current form. For example when I built the model last week it predicted Arsenal Third, Chelsea Forth but now predicts Tottenham Fourth and Chelsea fifth based on the change in Chelsea’s rating after the Aston Villa game.

So in short all of this means basically that there is no point me listing the league table as it has come from the model but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I will however be publishing my predictions each week so that you can see how I am doing over all, just the results though as the scores are seldom actually correct.

So here goes for this weeks

Blackpool V Birmingham – Blackpool Win
Fulham V West Brom – Fulham Win
Man Utd V Stoke City – Man Utd Win
Everton V Tottenham Hotspur – Tottenham Win
Arsenal V Man City – Draw
Aston Villa V Sunderland – Aston Villa Win
Newcastle V West Ham – Newcastle Win
Wolves V Chelsea – Draw
Blackburn V Liverpool – Blackburn Win
Bolton V Wigan – Bolton Win

2011 - My Predictions for the Year Ahead

So here goes, My predictions of the Headlines we will see over 2011.

Unions make reasonable Demands to avoid strike – Only joking of cause they won’t.

Sarah Palin seeks Republican Presidency Support
We should get a better idea of who will face Obama in 2012, Front runners at the moment seem to be the news papers favourite Sarah Palin and Mitch Daniels who is primarily an economist and will appeal to large areas of Republican Support (Daniels was the Budget Director for George W Bush which may work for or against him its hard to tell at the moment.) either way this time next year we should have a much better idea who it will be that starts the race for the Whitehouse. Although I am predicting that in the End Celebrity will beat competence.

Two Tier Euro Zone
After a very troubled couple of years it will be put up or shut up time for the Euro, in 2011 Germany and France will have three choices; first is to give the struggling Eurozone members all of the money they need to survive and therefore practically tie all of the Eurozone countries together in a truly single financial unit; second choice is to abandon the project and all go their separate ways after much cost and a great deal of embarrassment or Third (And what I consider the most likely) To create a 2 tier Euro with Germany, France and the Benelux states having the Euro with the Med Countries and Eastern Europe switching to a separately managed single currency.

Wide Spread Flight Disruption
Two sources for this one, The BA strikes will be returning next year as Unite once again seem to think that with BA leaking cash through every orifice that they should continue to be overstaffed and over paid. The main source of disruption I am talking about however is another Ash Cloud, during the last Ash cloud incident (I don’t feel it really deserves to be called a crisis) it was pointed out that the much bigger Katla Volcano was over due for eruption and I am predicting 2011 to be the year.

North and South Korea on the brink of war
I very much doubt that hostilities between the two Korean Republics will restart however with Kim Jung-Un taking over from his father as dictator of the Worlds least stable nuclear power I am predicting a fair amount of attention to be on the Korean peninsular and as China takes it’s place as the second superpower I imagine that they will want to limit the damage to their blossoming economic superiority which may well see China and America leading the world in a beneficial closer working relationship.

Widespread Protests (Of a minority)
I think we will get a great deal of noise from a very vocal minority of Union bosses and left leaning individuals still convinced that the country should not be trying to balance it’s budget, Whilst these deluded individuals talk about these great disruptions however I also predict that the rest of us will simply get up and come to work (despite their efforts to stop us.) and whilst Labour and the Unions bleat on about how unfair it is that those who are receiving state money are receiving slightly less for a while the rest of us just get on with paying for it.