Rachel Clarke has photos of the explosion in Manhattan, which happened at around 5:56pm Easern Time. CNN have reported three people have been injured.
This is an interesting picture of the current scenes in New York City. My first reaction was “oh no, not again”. I’m relieved that it’s not what it could have been. Phew.
Might there be something afoul with public-private partnerships? As a completely unqualified layman, they seem to lack either the checks of either government or the market. Since the man who helped pioneer public-private partnerships is now running the fracking country, should it not be a black mark against him that Metronet, the PPP charged with maintaining the Tube network, has collapsed. A particularly distressing part of the article was this from Jo Valentine from the business lobbying group London First: “The planned upgrade to the Victoria Line before 2012 is also vitally important, to ensure a positive visitor experience for the Games.” You know what, screw The Games? How about fixing the shit that actually matters for the people using the network outside of the two week period when this blasted, expensive folly takes place? Public-private partnerships are an accounting trick that avoids the unpopularity of government making a decision as to whether a service is to be run privately or publicly.
That Danny Ayers character is spreading all sorts of seditious thoughts about HTML. And they are good! Of course, they are completely “unpragmatic” and I’m sure they will be “considered harmful”. This is, of course, an inconvenience. The fact that it’s reasoned and true is a good reason why the people who make the decisions will ignore it utterly.
