Christmas light pollution

For as long as I can remember my mater has decried lurid xmas lights, with the shockingly vulgarity of flashing lights her particular bête noire. Well, according to the Institute of Physics at least, it looks like she might be on to something. Yesterday's Grauniad featured an article which reported that if everyone in the country slapped a tawdry light show on the outside of their house, then carbon dioxide emissions would increase by 1.6m tonnes and the country would appear boorish and uncouth. Ok, so they didn't actually say that it would make the country appear boorish, but I'm sure that was just a minor oversight — it was definitely there in the subtext.

Black Diamond stopping service

Had a grim journey from Exeter to Coventry. The train was so busy that at Temple Meads, the train crew tried to persuade people to switch to a direct bus to New Street. Then, when not enough people got off, they announced that the train wouldn't be stopping at Parkway or Cheltenham, which seemed to do the trick because the train set off shortly afterwards. Then, pretty much as soon as the train had cleared the platforms, they announced that the were actually going to stop at Parkway and Cheltenham after all... Talk about cheeky.