Measuring air quality

Just trying to compare air quality in various areas of East London because a comment to my last blog pointed out the good air quality at the northern end of Tower Hamlets.

So I used some air quality measurement websites to get exact results.

Using the London Air Quality Network, a message popped up that the London Borough of Tower Hamlets has opted not to be a member, so detailed information cannot be displayed. this service is run by Defra.

When I go to another site, addresspollution.org, all I can find is the same information for all areas of Tower Hamlets, an amber warning sign, saying that air pollution exceeds legal limits. The same message appears whether it is for E1 with the highly polluting Commercial Road or E2 near Victoria Park.

There is no distinction and that propably serves the current council strategy to deploy services by cost rather than distinct air quality.

This makes it very difficult for recent immigrants or residents of Tower Hamlets to actually know which areas are healthier than others. Just because a recent comment on my previous post pointed out that planners knew in the 19th. Century that the area around Victoria Park had health benefits.

So it is easy for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to argue that parents didn’t choose Raine’s because of the healthy location, because they make it impossible for peole to find out that the location actually is healthier.

Sectarianism

Sectarianism never works. It is, in my definition a violent pressure group, with specific cultural traits, that pressures an established government to allow those specific traits to prevail and if resisted fights for independence.

The Irish Sectarian movement have become clever and since they lost material support from the likes of Gaddafi they hush.

With the Kurds there is a peculiar problem, they have been used to fight Daesh – with US support – but now get hammered. But if the Kurds were clever, they would offer a truce to Turkey, let Turkey take over their land, occupied in Syria and then negotiate Syria’s Assad together with the Turks. Obviously the Russians wouldn’t support the Kurds because the Russians alrady support Assad. And fighting Syria and Russia v Turkey and the Kurds would attract international support, but as it is, the world just watches as Turkey hammers the Kurds. There have been escapes of Daesh prisoners already and it seems the previous problems are going to flare up again, which is quite unfortunate.

All Secterian movements are completely unflexible to other lifestyles. Of course that can be said about many cultures but what makes a group of people sectarian is, if they do not have the country to go with the lifestyle.

I suppose it is easy to manipulate any sectarian group anywhere in the world to cause trouble for the country or government they reside within. Any foreign power can supply the Resistance with weapons and get them to harrass the hated government.

I think it needs a world solution to this problem. With the ongoing climate change agenda, countries will need to learn to work together on that basis, perhaps they learn to put carbon footprints on the forefront of their thoughts, because wars are environmentally very damaging.

Perhaps we need a new world council, which decelerates wars. You can argue that nations have a right to defend themselves. This needs extraordinary amounts of weapons all around the globe. Weapons can be a deterrent but they also get used and inevitable cause immense destruction.

Here, we are back to sectarian groups who all think they have the right to be better and bigger.

 

Good luck Greta

I feel much more relaxed about Greta Thunberg’s trip to the US, since I’ve heard on a news story that actually one of her parents will be on the boat. It is a 60 x 12 foot boat without a toilet and amenities we are just used to.

It can’t do any harm to keep the discussion about climate change warm by constantly reporting about that trip of Greta.

What also interests me is how much Greta may miss her luxury home comforts during the journey for the sake of fighting climate change.

Lets hope all goes well.

I also hope that it will be easy to follow the media reports.