Boris fantasy one step closer.

It seems that Boris Island is now to be Boris Peninsular. There is of course a big difference between a roomful of suits nodding approvingly over a model and a project actually being built but the government are increasingly gung ho for anything that might lead to economic expansion and recovery. An airport on this site would mean the end of the Kent Marshes and several small communities but hey ho. There is also the small matter of the wreck of the WW II ammunition ship Richard Montgomery that sits just of the Isle Of Grain with 1500 tons of unstable high explosive in her hold. Still, greater minds than mine etc.

Eat your heart out Private Eye!

....and the worst fetch of the week....

In the wake of the Costa Concordia disaster TV crews and the media in general are climbing over each other to get good vox pop and expert witness interviews. The general secretary of Nautilus union has talked good sense about the drive for increased profit leading to the principles of naval architecture being disregarded as the size of cruise ships doubles in a decade. We have had the shifty looking captain who was seen stepping into a taxi moments after his ship had settled on the rocks. Mr and Mrs Brits Abroad have been complaining about the crew speaking foreign languages and the lack of safety procedures (normally they would be holding forth about health and safety gone mad- now they can't get enough of it.) Filipino crew members are wondering if they will ever see their wages (don't hold your breath lads) and there is plenty of footage in the can of passengers recounting how one minute they were watching the cabaret and the next plunged into darkness and knee deep in salmon mousse. By far the best story however, and one that will go down in the annals of both maritime disasters and the Magic Circle, is the one from the young conjurer's assistant who was on stage shut inside a box (presumably waiting to be sawn in half) when the ship ploughed into the solid stuff at 15 knots. Whatever show business throws at her in future will seem but a mere bagatelle in comparison.

Fetching up in Twickenham.

When a ship or craft is aimed at a destination, be it a coastline on the other side of an ocean or a jetty a hundred yards away, the resulting arrival is known as a "fetch". Missing the target is a "mis-fetch" and where we "fetch up" is our final destination, with a vessel or in life. When Harry Gosling retired it was to a house in Waldergrave Road, Twickenham aptly named 'Goodfetch". Apprenticed to his master lighterman father at the age of thirteen it would have been expected that Harry would spend all of his working life on the London River but he was a founder member of the Waterman and Lighterman's Union and soon became a full time union organiser. With Ben Tillett, Harry Gosling was a leader of the 1911 dock strike and it was with Tillett that Harry would go on to amalgamate several unions into the mighty TGWU. A long serving member of the old London County Council, MP for Whitechapel and Minister of Transport in the first ever Labour Government Harry Gosling was every inch the professional politician; and no doubt had many of the inherent failings of that breed. But who today could imagine someone who spent his formative years rowing rafts of timber on the tideway ending up as Minister of Transport? In a world where politics is dominated by Oxford PPE graduates we will not see such men again. After spending a good deal of my working life afloat I seem to have fetched up a couple of hundred yards away from Harry Gosling's final berth. Funny old world innit?

Wukan update.

I have posted previously about the inspiring revolt in the Chinese fishing village of Wukan. Be inspired further by this excellent update from The Commune.

High speed to nowhere.

By and large I'm in favour of trains and can still get quite excited at the prospect of a new rail journey. Railways are a much more civilised way of getting around than road transport and no rail station could ever match the tedium and squalid indignity of most airports. You can turn up at Waterloo or St Pancras safe in the knowledge that you will not be expected to wait around in your socks and knickers while some jobsworth checks your baggage for overdue library books. The war on terror has yet to reach us rail passengers. We still live in a world of Railway Children, Rupert Bear and Brief Encounters. Well, those of us who don't use the trains to get to and from work anyway. So if I'm so keen on railways how come I have all these misgivings about the High Speed link to Birmingham and beyond? It's not just the 32 billion quid either and much as I love the English countryside I know that it's been "spoilt" not by transport networks but by second homes and the erosion of the rural economy. It's not even my failing to understand why anyone could be in such a rush that shaving three quarters of an hour of the journey time to Brum is that important. No, it's just that like Iain Sinclair I tend to be a bit suspicious of Grand Projects. From Pyramids to Olympic Parks these monuments to hubris create only jobs (unwanted labour) and, I suppose, ruins for future tourists to wonder at.

TIME recognises the worth of TBODWE. Sort of.

I sometimes feel that I am not always accorded the respect and recognition that I deserve. It's a common complaint but self-pity is not an admirable trait and it's a case of shaping up or shipping out round here so I shove such thoughts to the back of my mind, brace up and soldier on regardless. You can see where this is leading can't you? A letter arrived in this morning's post.

"Dear Mr Hulm," it began, "I am delighted to inform you that you have been selected as someone whose status qualifies for a privilege price on TIME, one of the world's most respected and influential magazines." It's also pretty right-wing as well as being shallow and mind numbingly boring but who am I to reject overtures from any quarter. Anyone got any old Readers Digests they don't want?