Sunspots bad news for sat-nav users

Whilst many ham radio blogs have commented happily on the effects of an increase in solar activity, true to form the BBC has managed to find a downside. A story has just appeared on the BBC website telling us that the increase in sunspots will make our sat-navs go haywire leading presumably to airliners crashing, lorries falling off bridges and walkers getting lost in the mountains.

There was news story a few months ago (yes, this was actually on the national BBC TV evening news) that the Earth could collide with Mars in a billion years time. Don't let the fact that we won't merely be dead but extinct when it happens spoil a good doomsday story. I sometimes wonder if the BBC is the reason Britain is becoming a nation of binge drinkers on antidepressants.

My memory is not what it was, but I seem to recall that people did use GPS during the last solar maximum and nothing catastrophic happened. If you actually read the story, the effect of this increased solar activity is that your reported position could be inaccurate by up to ten metres. Occasionally. Gosh, better start preparing for this now, then.

A far bigger problem with satellite navigation systems is that the maps are inaccurate with the result locally that vehicles are still being directed along routes that would take them over bridges that are closed or even washed away after last year's flooding. Now that really is a news story.

Ghost town

The floods that hit Cockermouth just over a month ago may just be a long-forgotten news item for most people but they are still very much in the minds of people here. Through the energy and initiative of private enterprise, the resourcefulness of the local community - and no help at all from the local council - several local Cockermouth businesses have re-opened in temporary premises in a higher part of the town near the main supermarkets. Life goes on as best it can. But our quaint Georgian main street is like a ghost town. Here are some pictures from Cockermouth as it is today.

The footbridge over the river is down

Main Street is still closed to traffic

Most of the Main Street shops are still boarded up awaiting repair

Skips still line the street

Wordsworth House, the birthplace of England's greatest poet and the twon's main tourist attraction, was damaged by the floods

Many other bridges and structures are seriously damaged

Trust private enterprise to take the initiative - this travel agency was open for business in new premises the day after the flood

Message on a "tree of hope" in Market Place

Meanwhile the local authority has been reported in the local press as:

• Objecting to the construction of an emergency Tesco supermarket on the north side of the river in Workington to help local people who have a 25 mile detour to reach existing supermarkets on the south side, because planning procedures had not been followed.
• Delaying the construction of new road bridges by insisting that bureaucratic procurement procedures be followed, despite the fact that construction companies could build a new bridge "in weeks."
• Penny-pinching over the cost of extra school buses needed to take schoolchildren isolated on the north of the river to their schools in the south.
• Re-painting the yellow lines to show parking restrictions on the still closed to traffic Cockermouth streets.
  

The county council recently appointed a new chief executive, a former social worker, on a salary of £170,000 a year. Perhaps what is needed is a council run by people with business experience to help get the county back on its feet.

Prince Charles visits Cockermouth

Prince Charles visited Cockermouth this morning to thank the rescue services for their work during the floods of a week ago and hear at first hand what happened. This was no whistle-stop tour for a photo-op and a couple of soundbites as happened when politicians visited a few days earlier. It is common knowledge that the Prince loves the Lake District and often takes holidays here and his visit was clearly motivated by genuine interest and concern.

He arrived by RAF helicopter shortly after 10 o'clock and his first stop was the Cockermouth Mountain Rescue headquarters where he met representatives of all the rescue services and voluntary organizations that had been involved, together with various dignitaries including the Mayor of Cockermouth. After that he walked down to "Main Street at Mitchells" - the former job centre owned by local firm Mitchells to which several flooded-out Main Street business have temporarily relocated. He was there for more than half an hour talking to business owners and customers inside.

Prince Charles didn't walk down to Main Street to see the devastation for himself nor did he visit any flooded-out homes. Perhaps the powers that be decided it would be too dirty for him. Still it was nice of him to come. It is the closest I've come to any member of the Royal Family. The questions he asked showed genuine interest and concern and he was very warm and sympathetic and I'm sure he helped the people he spoke to forget their troubles for a little while.

Were the Cumbria floods man made?

As Cockermouth clears up after the floods and tries to get back to some semblance of normal life there's a rumour going round the town that the flooding was caused - or at least made worse than it need have been - by human action. It is being suggested that United Utilities, which owns Thirlmere lake and operates it as a reservoir, opened the sluice gates to release water into the River Greta which arrived in Keswick and then Cockermouth just at the time when the water level was already critical. This might explain why people who were there talk of the water level increasing with unbelievable rapidity.

Local people have been asking for years for the water level in Thirlmere to be maintained at a lower level to allow it to act as a sink for periods of heavy rainfall. But United Utilities has refused, being more interested in protecting its water asset for the benefit of its shareholders.

Meanwhile Cumbria County Council's new chief executive, whose salary is reported to be £170,000 per year (that's getting on for $300,000 for my US readers) has given her opinion that the disaster that occurred here is an example of climate change caused by global warming. I'm not sure why a local authority serving a population the size of Cumbria's needs an official whose salary is practically as much as the total remuneration of the British Prime Minister. But it might be better if she got on with the job of making decisions about what is going to be done and leave the unqualified pontificating to people like me who are happy to do it for nothing.

Gordon Brown's slap in the face for Cumbria

Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited our flood-hit town at the weekend and pledged a million pounds of aid. This has gained a lot of publicity as was no doubt intended but I don't know if it was supposed to be considered generous. I think it is a slap in the face. A million pounds will just about buy four three-bedroomed detached houses around here. I doubt it will even pay for the engineers who will have to survey the 1,000 bridges Mr. Brown has ordered to be checked.

The meanness of the Government's offer hasn't escaped the attention of some of our right-wing political parties, who point out that in the same week Brown gave £1m to Cumbria, the Department for Overseas Development gave away £293 million of taxpayers money to places like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. Another extremist site reported that the government gave £1m to Cumbria but £800m to India, a country that can afford its own nuclear weapons for heavens sake!

At the European elections, politicians expressed concern at the rising popularity of nationalist and extremist parties. If they want to know why, they should take a long look at themselves in a mirror. The mainstream parties are so out of touch with the public, so obsessed with their expenses and their own importance on the world stage, that they have let other parties with some rather unpleasant agendas gain a foothold simply for saying about everyday issues what a lot of ordinary people actually think.

If Gordon Brown wants a hope of getting re-elected he should start spending more of our taxes on us, the British people, and not on MPs expenses, bank bailouts, waging wars and handouts to foreign countries.

Flood relief for the people of Cockermouth

I have had several requests for information about where to send aid for the people of Cockermouth affected by the flooding.

The Cumbria Community Foundation has set up a Cumbria Flood Recovery Fund for individuals, families and voluntary groups that have suffered in the flooding. See the Cumbria Community Foundation website for more information.

The Rotary Clubs of Cockermouth and Keswick have also launched a charity appeal to help people affected by the flooding who are unable to afford insurance due to having been flooded previously and have no means to repair their homes. You can donate to this appeal using PayPal. See the Rotary Club of Keswick website. Alternatively you can send a cheque direct to David Collins (one of our neighbours) who is organizing the appeal for Rotary Club of Cockermouth.

The orange jackets take over

The water level in Cockermouth has receded from yesterday and it is now possible to walk along Main Street, at least it is if you are wearing an orange jacket. There is no access to the public yet, understandably, as even from as close as I could get you could see that the street is covered in a couple of inches of probably very slippery mud. The windows of every shop front have been broken by the pressure of water. It will probably be several days before the street is cleaned and buildings made secure and safe to allow public access again. How much longer before shops are dried out, refurbished and trading again? That's anyone's guess.

The river Derwent is still flowing fast and the water level is still only a couple of feet below the top of the arches of Gote Bridge. At the peak it must have been above the bridge level. Part of the stone parapet has been torn away by the force of the water and these large stones lay scattered over the roadway. At least the bridge is still there, unlike the one taking the A597 over the Derwent at Workington, which collapsed early yesterday morning while a police officer was on it, claiming his life.

One span of the modern footbridge linking one of the town's main car parks with the town centre has collapsed, as you can see in the distance in Olga's picture above, though all roads leading to that car park are closed at the moment anyway.

It is possible to get into the town from the south as there is no need to cross the river. The town's main Sainsbury's supermarket is open for business and has plenty of food. But it was unusually quiet for a Saturday, mainly because the only customers were those of us who arrived on foot.

The orange jackets had decided to commandeer all of the town's only other large car park, with the result that shoppers arriving by car had nowhere to park. Whether this was strictly necessary or not is debatable, as they were only occupying a small part of the car park. But an orange jacket confers magical powers of authority, so who could argue?

However, no-one thought to put signs at the outskirts of the town to say "all car parks closed, residents only access" with the result that there was a virtual gridlock of cars coming in by one of the two possible access routes in the hope of getting to the supermarket and finding that all they could do was drive through and out the other one.

Although yesterday we were allowed access to shops in Station Street that were unaffected by the floods, today we were not. There was a ribbon across the street and a couple of police ensuring that nobody but bona fide orange jackets were allowed to pass.

Presumably the bureaucrats, health and safety officers and other functionaries had now arrived on site and decided the public must not be allowed anywhere that people in orange jackets are working. The hardware store, the butcher's, the Co-op supermarket and the post office, all of which we visited yesterday and which the flood waters never reached, are now officially out of bounds. Those businesses that escaped damage by the flood waters are now suffering because of over-zealous officials.

The Cockermouth floods

When I eventually switched on my computer my inbox was full of messages of concern about our well-being. Cockermouth has made the news around the world for the flooding that has overwhelmed the town centre. Fortunately our house is at one of the higher points in the town, well above the water level. The main effects the disaster has had on us have been a couple of power cuts, a night disturbed by the sound of helicopters and emergency sirens, no access to the shops and the broadband internet not working. I am sending this from a netbook using a 3G mobile broadband dongle.

Cockermouth has flooded before, twice in the last few years, but this is probably the worst flooding since 1938. This time, the river Derwent flooded Main Street to a height of up to two metres during the night. By the time we took the picture above, late this morning, the water level had fallen by more than a metre. The pressure of the water had shattered shop windows, washing all the stock to the back, and we could see the tide mark left high on the wall by the water.

Cockermouth has many unique, independent businesses including a surprisingly large bookshop - only recently refurbished - several quality clothing shops, and shops selling hand made arts and crafts. It is normally a wonderful place to do Christmas shopping. All of these businesses are ruined, with little hope of recovery in time for Christmas. The word tragedy cannot begin to describe what this is for these small businesses.

The Christmas lights are up and the tree in place ready for the official switch-on of the illuminations this Sunday. Even if the water subsides by then - and more rain is forecast for tomorrow - I doubt if that is now going to happen.

Another casualty of the floods was Wordsworth House (seen above), birthplace of the famous English poet William Wordsworth and a major tourist attraction now in the care of the National Trust and open to the public as a museum. Olga works there one morning a week as a volunteer. We saw the custodian who said that the water level had been as high as the top of the wall. It is not yet known what damage has been done and what historical artefacts have been ruined or lost.

My heart goes out to the people who live near the river who have only just had their homes dried out after the last, much less severe, flooding.

As I write this, the rescue work still goes on. Helicopters still occasionally fly overhead, and you can still occasionally hear sirens. More heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow.

But it will take months for properties inundated by water to dry out and become habitable again, months for businesses to start up again - if they ever do - and months for the town to return to normal. This is, in the truest sense of the word, a disaster.

QSO by candlelight

On Thursday evening my wife and I were settling down to watch a film on TV when the lights went out. Because of heavy rain Cockermouth was on flood alert and unknown to us as we had not been out the river Derwent had burst its banks and flooded the town centre. I suppose the water had caused a short somewhere and the power had been cut off.

While my wife lit candles I got out the QRP K2, which by good fortune I had only recently charged up its internal SLA battery - which like the K2 is ten years old this year. It was very pleasant to listen to HF bands free of the awful electrical noise I am normally afflicted with.

Only 40m and 80m were open (of the bands I can use) and with only QRP there was not much chance of making an SSB contact. Although I have a battery powered laptop, using digimodes wasn't practical by candlelight since I could hardly see the keyboard. So I had to use CW.

Finding someone to have a contact with proved harder than I expected. When I called someone either they didn't hear anyone at all or replied to somebody else. I called CQ periodically as well. Eventually Peter G0KOK from Dover heard and replied to my call on 80m. Just as I was replying to him my candle went out so I was literally sending in the dark.

Peter gave me a 529 report, with a 559 from me. Peter was running an IC-7600 and presumably 100W so I'm not sure how much he copied from me and whether he realized he was in QSO with someone from a place that was making the news headlines. I had trouble copying him at times, though the QRN was from emergency services sirens and RAF Sea King helicopters hovering overhead not the usual interference from various neighbours' electrical devices.

I signed with Peter just before 10pm, and at about 10 minutes past the lights came back on again. It has been years since we last had a power cut here. If it happened more frequently I'd probably be better prepared for it.