Don't have a cow, man

An interesting piece on Newsnight last night. About cows. Dead cows, to be specific, and their role in powering trains, buses and cars in Sweden in an environmentally friendly way.

And here's how it works....

The dead spirits of the cows return to haunt the evil murderers who put them to death - something akin to Marley's ghost in a Christmas Carol - and tell the wicked men that they must stop killing animals and protect the environment by developing 'greener' sources of fuel. The wicked men, chastened by this experience, then go on to find a way of running Saabs off carrot juice and Volvos off lavender oil.

In reality, of course, the item didn't quite say this. What it did say was that the Swedes are using the organs, fat and guts from dead cows to produce the biogas to drive trains, taxis, rubbish trucks and private vehicles in the towns of Linkoping and Vastervik. I'm assuming here that there are zero (or at least very low) carbon emissions using this form of fuel but does appear to show what can be done when the political will is there.

An encouraging development then and one that could have implications beyond the arena of environmental and transport policy. It could affect our wider politics too. Take this man, ('take him please'...), his life could change overnight if we were all to depend on ex-vaches rather than oil for running our motors....I can see the headlines now, "Gorgeous George in dead cow-for-food scandal".

p.s. Watch the Newsnight video item.

Anarchy in the Mother of Parliaments

Confusion and mayhem hit the House of Commons today when the division bell , which alerts MPs to vote, developed a fault which caused it to ring even when a division (vote) had not been called. MPs - merrily watching childrens' telly in their Westminster pied-a-terres, enjoying a quiet pint or two in the local hostelry or devouring a filet mignon in a neighbouring bistro - were turned into gibbering wrecks as they felt obliged to rush out of their respective comfort zones to turn up for a three-line Commons vote.

Some left their pints immediately to make it to the lobbies, while others desperately snatched one last lingering look at Pingu or a forkful of foie gras, but for some it was all too much. The Honourable Nicholas Soames (Con, Mid Sussex), exercising the good grace of which his grandfather would have been proud, threw his pig's head in pigs trotters casserole at passers-by to express his profound indignation at being deprived of his third lunch of the day.

Fortunately, reader, this didn't happen at all. Fat Nick didn't miss out on his dinner. They’ve all got pagers now (“Will MP x please proceed to the lobby to vote on the Hedgehogs and Furry Animals Bill and remember to pick up some milk on the way back") so a catastrophe would have, in any case, been averted.

But we should be grateful too for the swift and decisive action of the Commons authorities. They acted with the efficiency and ingenuity for which they are renowned (how unkind of you to bring up the purple flour incident and that Otis Ferry business). The Serjeant at Arms (Peter Grant Peterkin) emailed all the users of the Parliamentary Network to trumpet his high tech solution to the division bell problem - flash the word DIVISION on the annunciator screen when there was a genuine division.

Genius.

With simple and effective solutions like these it can only be a matter of time before Peter Grant Peterkin is moving on to bigger and better things. Forget securing peace in the Middle East (oh, sorry, you had), surely the odds must be shortening on PGP (Peter Grant Peterkin) to take over from SGE (Sven Goran Erikkson) before the World Cup next year?

Where art thou Thimble?

The Thimble has, of late, been less than prolific. Tackling global poverty takes time - so it would have been nice if I had that as an excuse for my non-posting - but alas my absence is due to rather less noble reasons. I am just very lazy and lacking in inspiration.

'Very lazy and lacking in inspiration' - sounds like a commentary on David Davis.*

It is not like anything has happened while I've been away....the tragedy of the London bombings (no, it wasn't our fault), the unbridled joy of an Ashes victory (thank you Freddie at al) and the shock of Kate Moss taking drugs (zzzz....) to take just a few examples of blog-worthy events.

Arguably more momentous than any of these, though, was the launch of the Guardian in its Ich Bin Eine Berliner format. Indeed, as a homage to this ground-breaking innovation I have revised the format of this blog. It now comes in an easy-to-read on the tube format and can fit handily into your, erm, hand-bag. Watch out on Saturday too for the free dvd 'The Importance of Being Egregious' starring Madeline Bunting and Gary Younge.

Anyway, enough of this floatsam. This is just a wee message to say 'I am still here' and I shall be posting again soon. Thanks for your continued interest.

The Thimble

p.s. I went to France and took far too many pictures of harbours...see my photos at the flickr link below.

p.p.s. I've noticed the Guardian G2 columnists doing a "This week X is reading....an Ikea catalogue" so, following on in this vein, I am reading Albert Camus' The Rebel . Having read Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism (see here and here) - which is definitely worth reading - I thought I would give Camus a try.

*For the uninitiated, David Davis is a Conserative MP, brought up in a council house don't you know, who is running for the leadership of a political party called the Conservative and Unionist Party. They used to be big in the 80s.