Month: July 2005

More London bombs, ho hum

So, we have more disruption resulting from a (luckily) failed attempt to blow up more parts of the tube. It did seem fairly inevitable that there would be a second attempt, as much as it was inevitable that someone or other would eventually manage to pull off the first one (whatever cause they claimed it was in aid of). For me, living with the possibility of a terrorist attack is just something that comes part and parcel with being in London, and I’ve made the choice to stay here that the realisation of that possibility isn’t going to change. After all, statistically the risks are still very small. For some people I can imagine this might tip the balance the other way, though, and I’ve yet to say whether I might find myself cycling in Central London slightly more often. (You never know – there might be more lives saved through people actually getting some exercise!)

If they’re going to keep blowing things up, though, it’s going to start getting really annoying. Hopefully there isn’t an endless supply of idiots who are prepared to strap bombs to their backs, or at least the idiots will carry on being stupid enough to not be able to work their bombs.

London blasts: At-a-glance
Tube travel disruption continues

William IV pub, Leyton

For anyone in the area who doesn’t already know about it, the William IV pub at the Baker’s Arms in Leyton is one of the best pubs in the area. They have a good selection of real beer such as “London Pride” and “Discovery”, and serve surprisingly good Thai food. There is a small beer garden out the back which was fairly empty on a Tuesday night.

The only real way to get to the pub is by bus, either from Walthamstow, Stratford (69), Leyton (any number of buses), or from the centre of town on a 48, 55 or 56.

William IV on Beer in the Evening

William IV on Fancyapint.com

Blogger adding an extra clear: both div to posts

Lots of people have noticed recently that Blogger has started publishing posts with a

tag before the posting text. This broke my layout and have me invalidly nested tags since I was including the opening and closing

tags in the template. The extra

tag meant that the browser closed the previous block element (the

) and then after closing the

went back to put the first paragraph of content straight after. This meant my posting class wasn’t being applied so the first paragraph of every post didn’t look right. It also broke the already broken HTML on the site.

So, since it was annoying for me, I’ve written a partial fix in JavaScript. Paste the code below into your Blogger template just before the closing tag. This is important as it needs to be in the code after all the content.

var allDivs = document.getElementsByTagName("div");
for(var i=0;i<allDivs.length;i++){
 var curDiv=allDivs[i];
 if(curDiv.parentNode.className=='postingBlock'){
  var block=curDiv.parentNode;
  html=block.innerHTML;
  html=html.replace(/()?
/gi,'');
  block.innerHTML=html;
 }
}

I’ve tested it in IE6 and Firefox so far, and I’m not really bothered about the rest at the moment although it should work in IE5+.

Review of Nama Bar and Restaurant, London (kangaroo and chips)

I went to the Nama Bar last night on a special offer (vouchers from The Times) since I’d been in a pub in the area. It’s not quite what I was expecting, definitely more of a bar than a restaurant, and not very Japanese at that. Okay, there were the usual Bento Boxes (which seemed to contain a slightly odd combination), but otherwise there were things like Cumberland sausages and mash. Just adding wasabi to mash potato doesn’t seem particularly Japanese.

Feeling adventurous, I decided to go for the ostrich (which I have had before). I wasn’t quite feeling adventurous enough to try the crocodile, but only because it came with wasabi mash which sounded a step too far to me. Unfortunately they had no ostrich but I was offered kangaroo instead. Definitely a result there! Kangaroo seems to sit somewhere between lamb and beef both in flavour and texture. A side portion of french fries were definitely a necessity, though. Plus a glass or two of red wine. The prices seemed reasonable to us since we were on a 2 for 1 offer, but I would expect a meal to come to around £25 a head at full price which isn’t too bad for good food in central London.

Would I go again? I would be more likely to go for the drinks than the food, to be honest, not because of the quality (I actually found the food to be quite good) but because the atmosphere doesn’t seem quite suited to that level of eating. The music was a touch on the loud side and the whole place had a bit more of a ‘party’ feel to it all. Also, I was sat on a sofa which wasn’t quite high enough for the table.

The Nama Bar website
Location of the Nama Bar
Nama Bar details at View London

London transport bomb attacks

Luckily my travelling today didn’t overlap with any of the explosions, as my office is about half a mile outside of Liverpool Street, but it’s certainly causing a lot of disruption. No-one I know seems to be that badly affected either except for having to walk home.

It will be interesting to see how the country reacts in view of other terror attacks around the world. Terrorists attacking New York prompted America to invade half of the middle east, bombs in Madrid changed the result of the Spanish election and caused withdrawals from Iraq, so I wonder how much of a difference it will make here. My personal view is that in terms of general public opinion it won’t make much of a difference. As a nation we may easily roll over in the face of America’s warmongering but a positive quality is that we are not generally prone to reactionism, either to become more agressive or to change the way we do things just to placate these people. London is generally multicultural enough to know that the actions of a small group of extremists does not represent how larger groups think in general, and really I can’t see how carrying out these attacks is going to do anybody’s cause any good whatsoever.

London rocked by terror attacks
Travel chaos after London blasts

London to host Olympics in 2012

London has won the contest to host the 2012 Olympics, which is great news for all of us who live in East London and have been waiting for some infrastructure investment to give the area a lift for years.

Victory is particularly good given that it was the French that lost, of course, given Chirac’s recent behaviour over food and EU subsidies. This BBC article particularly rubs it in.

Some of my favourite quotes from news articles include:

But raindrops began falling on disapointed Parisians outside the Hotel de Ville in the French capital shortly after the result.

Chirac spoke passionately to the IOC, saying, “The heart of Paris and the heart of France are beating in unison in the hope of becoming Olympic host in 2012,” The Associated Press reported. “You can put your trust and faith in France, you can trust the French, you can trust us.”

To those who see the French president as out of step with the pace of modern Europe, Jacques Chirac’s jibe about British food is perhaps a case in point.

They’ve got a slick rail network, a home-grown car industry and magnificent stretches of Napoleonic architecture that escaped the German Luftwaffe’s mighty payloads.

We, on the other-hand, have half their unemployment, a global language and, for the next six months at least, the EU presidency. Oh, and the 2012 Olympics.

Appropriately, the celebration party is being held in Trafalgar Square, a week after celebrations marking Nelson’s famous victory over the joint French / Spanish fleet 200 years ago.

This decision will exacerbate that general sense of malaise, especially as the winner is Paris’ greatest rival, London. President Jacques Chirac had wanted to arrive for the G8 summit a winner. Instead he comes as a three-time loser whose nation was pipped at the post by a victorious Britain.

My heart bleeds.

Paris 2012 Olymbic Bid T-shirts half price

The Olympic bid voting results

London beats Paris to 2012 Games

More disappointed French comments