Month: April 2005

The Lincolnshire Poacher… a secret MI6 radio transmission ?

What are The Lincolnshire Poacher, the Spanish Lady or the Swedish Rhapsody ? Well, apparently, they’re secret spy radio transmissions, broadcasting the encoded messages of the world’s secret services. You can pick them up on short-wave radio anywhere, just listen out for strange electronic voices reading long lists of numbers. They’re cryptic signals sent out to intelligence agents in the field. They’re totally weird, strangely compelling and just a bit spooky.

Radio 4 broadcast a fascinating programme devoted to the mysterious numbers stations this morning.

MI6’s station is known in the trade as ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’ because it’s radio signature is an electronic version of the famous Lincolnshire folk song. The transmission changes to a British woman’s voice reading endless strings of numbers. Here’s a creepy video of one of their broadcasts. Allegedly, the signal is transmitted to secret agents worldwide from a special base in Cyprus. All the agent needs is an innocent looking radio and the right cipher to decode the message using the one-time pad cryptosystem.

There are loads of other numbers stations, no doubt broadcast by secret intelligence agencies all over the world. They have strange nicknames like the Spanish Lady, Swedish Rhapsody, Czech Drums And Trumpets, The Skylark, Papa November, Bulgarian Betty, The Russian Man and The Russian Woman.

Governments and intelligence agencies deny everything and refuse to discuss these strange broadcasts. They have been going on for decades and no one really knows anything about them. Bizarre. Some enthusiasts have tracked and monitored the transmissions and tried to find out where they come from. Check this site out for more recordings and stuff. If you wanna have a listen, here’s the ultimate numbers station frequency list.

Your top search engine queries… do they make any sense ?

Ok, here’s a little game to occupy an idle moment. Head to your blog’s web stats package. Whatever you use should give a listing of your top search engine query words. String them together in the order listed and add a bit of punctuation… do they make any sense ?

It’s a bit like those monkeys typing out Shakespeare. One day, will a profound sentence suddenly appear…. ?!

Here’s mine…

The and maid, superfriends hunting. Grrr jewish in fantastic pictures. Russian cooking, german photos. To shmuck words polish. Gotta his bridge wife. Truth, paper led biggest wallpaper. Viking camilla seventeen.

Ok, here’s a weird one.

Ok, here’s a weird one. Not sure if it’s just me, but some mornings when the alarm clock goes off, I could swear I can hear the birds outside mimicking the sound of the alarm. They hear it and copy it or reply to it or something. I’m sure I can hear them sometimes. It may be just me in a confused, semi-awake state hearing things, or I may be a bit mad… Anyone else experience this or am I just totally insane !

mmmm… cake

made a seriously yummy banana cake with frosted chocolate topping the other day. mmmmmm. here’s how….

  • 125g/4oz butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
  • 185g/6oz caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 185g/6oz flour, siflted
  • 1½ teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 3 small ripe bananas

Cream butter and vanilla essence in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add sugar gradually, beating well after each addition.

Beat in eggs one at a time and fold in. Add mashed bananas and combine flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and fold into butter and egg mixture. Spoon mixture into greased and lined 11 x 21cm loaf tin. Bake at 180°C, 350°F, Gas 5 for 1 hour. Stand for 5 minutes before turning onto wire rack.

Chocolate Icing

  • 90g/3oz butter
  • 250g/8oz icing sugar, sifted
  • 1 tablespoon cocoa powder, sifted
  • 2 tablespoons cream

Beat butter in a bowl until creamy. Add icing sugar, cocoa powder and cream. Beat until frosting is of spreadable consistency.

Kew Gardens

Went to Kew Gardens yesterday.

What a special place.

I didn’t know you could have so much fun with a bunch of plants ! I

f you get the chance, go ! it’s great.

The huge palm houses were hot, humid and spectacular. Some of the big palms were stunningly beautiful, displaying amazing detail and symmetry.

The towering banana trees, giant bamboo and coconut palms were surrounded by endless varieties of smaller plants and flowers.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory is a stunning collection of wet tropical and cloud forest plants along with ferns, cacti and a whole room devoted to carnivorous beasties.

The orchids were delicate and beautiful and the aquarium and aquatic plants awesome.

I loved the underwater tanks with their rays and brightly coloured fish. One little guy seemed genuinely annoyed to be photographed through the glass !

The bonsai trees were arranged in neatly clipped, miniature perfection and the rock gardens laid out with a bewildering array of plants and flowers from literally every corner of the planet.

The Temperate house had whole trees and shrubs from Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Some of the ferns were massive and the centre-piece was undoubtedly the world’s largest indoor plant, the great Chilean wine-palm.

We wandered down to the Evolution House which covered 3,500 million years of plant evolution (think about that for a second !). The first displays showed boiling mud pits and volcanic vents which soon turned into steaming ponds of potent bacteria and algae. Within a few steps this primordial soup gave way to mosses, ferns and damp rainforest before opening up to show a variety pollinating plants. Brilliantly conceived and put together.

I loved it.

It beautifully demonstrated how plants, and later animals, developed over millions of years. I couldn’t help wonder how those obstinate creationists would react to such a place. Imagine a family of fundamental Christians on holiday in London. They believe genesis is fact and evolution fiction. They come to Kew and are confronted with the Evolution House. Do they turn tail and run or sharply warn the kids not to go near ? How could they deny such overwhelming evidence. Surely they can see any notion that ‘God created heaven and earth’ is simply ludicrous.

In the real world evolution is obviously how it happened. Kew really is such a great place to see the wonders of evolutionary development and appreciate the sheer diversity of life.

It’s amazing how many plant species they have. All neatly collected, catalogued and nurtured for our appreciation. The biodiversity of the place is truly astounding. I never fully appreciated how amazing plant life really is…

A great day !

Why not to vote Conservative…

Ahh, it’s election time again and the parties are falling over themselves to secure our vote. It’s interesting that this election is all about management – who will manage public services, and public finances, better. It’s not really about political ideology, left versus right or the big questions. It’s about administrative competence. Who will run things better.

The two main parties are competing for the middle ground and their policies and financial proposals are reasonably similar. Give or take a few billion here and there, the Tories and New Labour are in the same ball park. The Lib Dems, no doubt very nice people, aren’t really contenders.

The Tories have so far run a good campaign. They have succeeded in dominating the headlines and attacking the government at every opportunity. However, I have a big problem with their stance on immigration and Europe. On both they are dangerously misguided and driven by unfounded ideological bias.

In reality, immigration in Britain is not a big problem. If anything, we as a country are net beneficiaries. The idea that waves of people are flooding our shores is utter nonsense. It’s simply not true. It’s a Daily Mail fantasy which the Tories have adopted. It’s populist, but it’s rubbish. It’s one of those curious issues where what people believe is radically different from what’s actually happening.

Time Magazine recently did a piece on Britain and immigration titled, ‘Immigration works far better for Britain than Britons realize. A hard look at the facts’. Read it. Forget the Daily Mail, they’re writing biased nonsense. The problem is the Tories have now turned this into policy. Yes, some people enter Britain illegally. You would expect the world’s 4th largest economy to attract economic migrants. But the ‘waves’ and ‘floods’ of tabloid lore simply do not exist. They are phantom threats, conjured up by biased journalists and right-wing commentators. To campaign on a deception and play upon people’s fears is not acceptable.

We should be in Europe and play a leading role at the heart of the European Union. It is our future. The Tories are by nature anti-European. The issue of Europe has split and divided the Conservative party for at least 40 years. Their conservative instincts say No, No, No. Their current European policies emphasise re-negotiating treaties and ‘saving the pound’. We do not want them negotiating on our behalf at the European top table, especially at this crucial juncture in the evolution of the EU.

The recent expansion to 25 means that Europe will inevitably develop along a more open, decentralised path. It is simply not practical to standardise governance from Portugal to Poland. Diversity, deregulation, regional autonomy are inevitably Europe’s future. France and Germany are just realising this. It has been a triumph of British European policy that Europe is now so large that the old centralising Franco-German tendencies cannot work any longer.

Europe is ours to play for and we do not want a backward looking Tory party in the driving seat during this crucial phase. A Conservative government with its ridiculous position of re-negotiating agreed treaties will only result in a bad deal for Britain.

The Tories are yesterday’s men and should be treated as such. We don’t want the likes of Michael Howard or John Redwood running the place. It would be a disaster. A throw back to the bad old days of Tory rule. Keep the Tory out…

BBC Creative Archive

I’ve always been a huge fan of the BBC. They do so many great things and are just so good. Now, they’ve just unveiled their Creative Archive project. Basically, any UK TV licence holder can access footage from the BBC archive and “find, share, watch, listen and re-use the archive as a fuel for their own creative endeavours. In other words, you can rip, mix and share the BBC.“. How good is that. Genius !