Ike poses threat of “certain death”

By Calvin Palmer

The warning from the Mayor of Galveston’s office was stark.  “Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family, one- or two-story homes will face certain death,” said official Mary Jo Naschke.
 
Her words were backed up by the first effects of Hurricane Ike.  Sea water had already started to flood the low-lying city on the island of Galveston.  And Ike is still 190 miles off shore.
 
The Category 2 hurricane will make landfall on the Texas coast either later tonight or in the early hours of Saturday morning.  Galveston and Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States, lie directly in its path.
 
The Mayor of Houston, Bill White, and Harris County Judge Ed Emmet urged residents living in areas at risk from flooding to leave their homes.
 
“This is a serious event,” said White.  “If you had a plan that you were going to wait it out in place, that may have made sense yesterday.  It doesn’t make sense now.  Don’t wait until noon to decide whether to evacuate.”
 
Houston residents not in these surge zones, which forecasters predict could be as high as 20 feet, have been told to stay put.
 
Frank Michel of the Houston mayor’s office urged those living on higher ground to board up their windows and stock up on medicine, food and water.  Ike’s 110 mph winds could cause power outages lasting several days.
 
Oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut off.  The U.S. Department of Energy believes the production platforms will largely escape the effects of Ike.
 
The wholesale price of gasoline rose to $4.85 in the Gulf area and there was a slight knock-on effect in other wholesale markets throughout the country.  Those increases might not be passed on to customers unless the effects of Ike are severe and long-lasting, according to one oil market analyst quoted by the Associated Press.
 
The Army’s air force has already been called into action to rescue the 22-man crew of the freighter Antalina, which has lost power 90 miles south of Galveston.  Two helicopters and three other aircraft had been sent to the stricken vessel but the rescue mission had to be aborted.
 
Galveston is the scene of America’s greatest natural disaster, when a Category 4 hurricane swept ashore on September 8, 1900, claiming 6,000 lives.  The 15-foot storm surge swept over the barrier island and destroyed 3,600 homes in the city.

The death and destruction of that storm prompted the building of a 17-foot high sea wall and the raising of some parts of the island.  The new wall was soon tested by a similar strength storm and 12-foot surge in 1915.  Although 265 people lost their lives, the loss of life did not approach the magnitude of the Great Storm in 1900.

[Based on reports in the Houston Chronicle, and AFP.]

School bus plan on road to nowhere

By Calvin Palmer

Once again Britain seems to be following America’s example, with the announcement of a plan to ferry schoolchildren to and from school in yellow buses.
 
But wait a minute.  There is nothing American about this idea.  I can remember in the 1960s a bus being laid on to take me to school, not just me but other boys who lived in the same area.  The buses were referred to as school specials.
 
I also thought part of the idea of ending grammar schools was to give the comprehensive high schools that replaced them a local catchment area, thus ending the need to bus children half way across a city to attend school.  I remember people moving house just so their children would fall into the catchment area of one of the better state schools.
 
So why are children being taken the short distance to school by car?  The answer is another import from America – parental paranoia.  It only takes one child to be abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered for parents to put their children effectively under house-arrest and monitor their movements in ways that could have come straight out of the Stasi training manual.
 
And just for the record, there were cases of children being abducted and killed in the 1960s.  Many people will remember Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and the Moors Murders.  Children have always been vulnerable, and always will be, but they are no more vulnerable now than they were 30, 40 or 50 years ago.
 
The idea for American-style school buses comes from the cross-party Yellow School Bus Commission, chaired by the former Education Minister, David Blunkett.  It also suggests that children living within a mile of their primary school or two miles of their secondary school be encouraged to walk or cycle.  I fear that is flying in the face of parental paranoia.
 
It is estimated the school bus scheme would cut 130 million car journeys a year, saving parents up to ₤92 million a year in petrol costs.  I think that might be a little disingenuous because someone somewhere is going to have to pick up the bill for running these buses. Just call it a wild hunch on my part but I would say it would probably be the taxpayer.
 
Apparently, parents are prepared to pay up to ₤2 a day to have their children ferried to and from school.  The rest of the money, up to ₤250 million, would come from education expenditure.  Seems I was right.  So a parent pays ₤2 a day — I wonder how long it will be before the price rises to ₤3 a day and then ₤5 a day — and on top of that has to pay extra in tax.  And if parents are not spending money on petrol, the government will have to make up the shortfall in revenue from the duty it imposes on a gallon of petrol.
 
But it will be oh so worth it, as Blunkett explains.  The investment in the buses is crucial for “the education, safety and security of our children.”  Crucial?  Safety and security? Has he been watching Republican adverts in Texas?
 
I am not so sure about the safety and security aspect.  Back in Texas, when my two stepchildren were of high school age, they did not ride the school bus.  When I asked my wife why they couldn’t ride the bus, I was told that they would have to get up at the crack of dawn and could not ride the bus back home if they took part in after school activites.  She also added that it was not particularly safe and our children didn’t need to be mixing with the children who regularly travel on the bus.  They tend to be the rougher crowd.
 
The several fights on school buses in America, which have been shown on network television, bear out my wife’s reasoning.  Such a frightening prospect would be sufficient for many parents in England to make sure Tarquin and Emily arrive at school in the comfort of the family SUV.  And the children themselves will not relish giving up that comfort to ride on a school bus.  Once the genie has been let out of the bottle, it is difficult to put it back in.
 
Blunkett adds: “The scheme could revolutionize the way we do the school run.”  Hardly a revolution if it is simply reviving something that was in place 40 years ago.  But politicians do like to dramatize things.
 
The commission also points out that investment in the scheme would benefit the economy to the tune of ₤460 million a year, as well as giving parents more time at work.  I imagine parents will be overjoyed at that.
 
The Department for Children, Schools and Families has welcomed the commission’s report as a useful tool in developing strategies that will make this a reality.  The department plans a detailed response to the recommendations.
 
The commission was sponsored by a bus company, First Group.  Should we be at all surprised that it arrived at these findings? It strikes me that the only people to gain from this scheme will be the bus companies.  It’s a bit like Ford sponsoring a commission that comes to the conclusion that children should be taken to school in cars because they are crucial for the education, safety and security of our children.  The logic is just as fatuous.

[Based on a report in The Daily Telegraph.]

England sox it to the Yankees

By Calvin Palmer

Baseball is as American as American can be.  Teams such as the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox instantly evoke the great cities of New York, Los Angeles and Boston.
 
The American poet Walt Whitman once said: “It’s our game; that’s the chief fact in connection with it; America’s game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions; fits into them as significantly as our Constitution’s laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.”
 
But instead of hotdogs and Bud Light at the ball park, think meat pies and Bass Pale Ale.  Out of left field comes the news that the game was in fact invented in England. 
 
A diary found by a local historian in a shed near Guilford, Surrey, provides evidence of the game being played in 1755.  Previously it had been thought the game originated in America in 1790.
 
The entry in the diary of lawyer William Bray documents a game with friends, when he was still a teenager. 

It reads: “Easter Monday 31 March, 1755.  Went to Stoke Ch. this morning.  After dinner went to Miss Jeale’s to play Base Ball with her, the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford & H. Parsons & Jelly.  Drank tea and …”
 
The entry has been verified by Julian Pooley, manager of the Surrey History Center in Woking and an expert on Bray.
 
The Major Baseball League was notified of the find by Surrey County Council and accepted that the diary did contain the earliest known reference to baseball.
 
Helyn Clack, an elected member of Surrey County Council, said:  “Baseball is an integral part of American life and this news about a national obsession in the U.S., where home-grown sports have traditionally dominated, will reverberate far and wide.
 
“It is a game steeped in history and now Surrey County Council’s History Center and an inquisitive local historian have provided the earliest manuscript proof that the game the Americans gave to the world came from England.”
 
The first recorded competitive baseball game took place in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1846.

[Based on reports in The Daily Telegraph, the San Francisco Chronicle and BBC News.]