The Government
Guidance on
platform 57

.

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

.

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

.

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

There is a lot of Government Guidance on Contaminated Land, however the big event everyone is waiting for is the eventual appearance of 'Those Government Guidelines' - yes the ones that are supposed to appear by July 1999.

Unfortunately a little dicky bird has whispered in the ear of the good Dr Hackenbush that there might be a little delay (yes yet another one!) and that they might not appear before the Autumn of 1999.

At first sight it seemed as if they might blame the delay on the Millennium bug and not issue them until the 'Mother of all Hangovers' cleared on the 2nd Jan 2000 - at least that way there would have been nobody in any condition to raise any objections (as they would in all probability be stuck in a lift somewhere!)

However this Government is not shy of grasping the ne(w)ttle, and shortly before the Millbank Council met to hear the recantation of Galileo Livingstone (who doubtless also said Eppur si muove when talking about the Tube system) it issued the latest round of Guidance at the beginning of October.

Good news for all, although Mathematics is not a strong point of our glorious nation (afterall the number 28 was blocked by the House of Lords, whilst the number 143 fared no better in the House of Commons) our genetically modified legislators have decreed that the number 57 is safe for release into the wild.

So from henceforth (well at least from the 1st of April 2000) let there be rejoicing throughout the land, as consultants scrabble to learn how to pronounce CLEA, as well as pronouncing upon CLEA.

Alas for Galileo Livingstone the news is not so good, as it has been decreed that it is not safe for him to be released into the wild, as it is feared that the Tube bacterium that now is part of his genetic makeup, may prove deadly to the Humble Cabbage White Dobson butterfly that flutters so delicately in the warm London Spring sunshine.

Better news for other Government Guidance, apparently Gordon Brown crossed with the Bt bacterium is perfectly safe as it will only give rise to share price falls in the short-term (unless the Froggies get their hands on our local wolf of course)

Oh by the way do you fancy seeing if you'd get into Mensa (the high IQ society) well then try solving this little algebraic conundrum, related to London, where :-

35.2 A + 26.9 B + 86.4 C > 54.9 A + 70.9 B + 12.0 C

?

Environmental
Magazines

.

.

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

There are basically two sorts of Environmental Magazine currently available.

1. High ratio of Adverts to Editorial
   
2. Low ratio of Adverts to Editorial

The first type also sometimes publishes 'advertorials' where an advertiser will have an editorial article written about them. This in a sense is a PR (press release) article, along the lines of "Company X used Product Y to solve Problem Z".

The problem that arises, as in life, is that someone has to be paid to produce the magazine, hence the two main solutions :-

1. The magazine is free, but has controlled circulation and is specifically targeted at people who 'recommend or specify' product purchases within an organisation.
   
2. The magazine is available by subscription, to anyone who wishes to purchase it.

Hence if you want to get on the subscription list of a 'free' Trade magazine (such as Maggot Breeders Weekly) you need to do the following:- firstly ask for a 'Media Pack', find out who they are targeting and then send off an application form, in which you amazingly qualify for a free subscription by virtue of your title as 'Marketing manager for a multinational that breeds genetically modified terminator maggots'

Sadly this ploy does not work for magazines where they ask you to pay, your only hope is to ask for a media-pack (which usually has a sample copy in it) every other month (not forgetting to use a different address each time). The down-side to this is that one day AOL will buy their mailing list, and you will wake up one morning with a skips worth of 'free CDs' shoved through your letterbox !

?

Environmental
E-zines

.

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

The trend nowadays is to 'add value' to a paper-based publication by having a website that is not just an electronic replica of a magazine, hence the rise of so-called Environmental E-zines.

These Electronic Magazines are usually sent out on a regular basis (weekly, fortnightly etc), and have two major advantages over their paper-based counterparts.

• One can 'cut and paste' information from them
• They have 'live-links' to interesting websites

There are two basic formats to E-zines, either POE (Plain Old Email) or HTML (Webpage format), in an ideal world where everyone had a 'free email account' everything would be in HTML, however....

HTML format invariably uses images, hence can look messy, and needs more download time (just to get a feel for this try loading your favourite Webpage, first with images on and then with them off - it is usually 3 times slower!)

POE is much faster, can be accessed by any device (Computer, PDA, mobile phone), but does not have 'enhanced capabilities' (i.e. being able to click on a hyperlink). On balance however this is the preferred format for E-zines.

?

Environmental
Books

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

With the rise of Internet bookshops, Environmental books that might have languished in obscurity are accessible and available just a mouse-click away.

The grand-daddy (or doyen - if you want to use a big-word that is short) of course is www.Amazon.com although of course there are others.

We are registered as an Associate of Amazon, and have compiled a listing of Environmental books + publications from Amazon's UK site. However for once this in not out of the goodness of our heart, but because we will get a small commission from them on every book that gets sold through this website.

If this concept disturbs you then why don't you buzz-off, stop using this website for nothing, and go and waste someone-elses electrons on your glowing phosphor screen!!

Based on a recent cruise (12th November 1999) along the Amazon here are a few interesting titles to while away those long Pre-Millennium-Tension blues.

1. Brownfields - 5 titles
   
2. Contaminated Land - 85 titles
   
3. Landfill - 69 titles
   
4. Remediation - 101 titles
   
   

?

Search the
www.Amazon.co.uk
database

Would you like to search the www.Amazon.co.uk bookshop yourself ? You can search by:-

• Author
• Title
• Topic

?

You can lead
a horse to
water but...

.

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

.

.

.

[Return to Top]
[Go to Bottom]
> Breadcrumbs >

A salutory lesson (that the present Government might care to take on board) is that no matter what you suggest to people that they should do - they will invariably do something completely different!

We have had a link to www.Amazon.com for 11 months, with over 270 interesting titles on our site, and as of February 23rd 2000, have earned the princely sum of £8.06p!! Now if that wasn't bad enough, nobody has yet actually bought a book from our list of recommended titles (Brownfields, Contaminated Land, Landfill, Remediation). So what have they bought? well....

1. Counselling Young People £ 14.99
2. Identity in Adolescence £ 14.99
3. Juicing for Health £ 5.59
4. Pocket Guide to Clinical Examination £ 11.95
5. Scotland the Best! £ 12.99
6. The Complete Facilitator's Handbook £ 25.00
7. The Internet 2000: the Rough Guide £ 6.00
8. The Remorseful Day £ 8.33
9. The Sopranos [Soundtrack] £ 10.12
10. Tony Couch's Watercolour Techniques £ 7.96
11. Total Juicing : Over 125 Healthful recipes £ 7.61
12. Youth in Society £ 14.99

Never mind the supposed correlation between the sales of nappies and six-packs of beer on a Friday night (husband on the way home forced to do some last minute shopping) lets see those poncey data-miners make sense about the link between Contaminated Land and Pocket Guide to Clinical Examination !