This wek’s Barometer
Crime lords
— Lord Taylor of Warwick was jailed for 12 months for fiddling his expenses. He is the fourth peer of the realm to be jailed, after Lord Archer (jailed for four years in 2001 for perjury),
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (16 months in 2005 for setting light to hotel curtains at the Scottish Parliamentarian of the Year awards) and Lord Ahmed of Rotherham (12 weeks in 2009 for dangerous
driving). Lord Hanningfield, convicted last week of fiddling his expenses, is also likely to receive a custodial sentence.
— If five out of 789 peers are jailed over a ten-year period it suggests an annual imprisonment rate of 0.06 per cent of the ennobled population, about one third of that for commoners.
Moonage daydream
The penultimate space shuttle mission has concluded, with no American replacement due until at least 2015. It is a far cry from the ambitions of Nasa’s Space Task Group Report, published in
the aftermath of the first Moon landing in 1969. This was one of three options then envisaged:
By 1975: a reusable Earth-to-orbit shuttle capable of 60 missions a year
By 1978: a lunar surface base
By 1980: a space base in Earth’s orbit
By 1981: a manned mission to Mars
By 1985: 100 people at space base
Something they ate
An E. coli outbreak in Germany, alleged to have originated in cucumbers from an organic farm in southern Spain, has killed 14 people so far. Other noted outbreaks:
Olives at Lakeside Country Club, Myers Lake, Canton, Ohio, 1919: 7 deaths
Duck-paste sandwiches at Loch Maree Hotel, Scotland, 1922: 8 deaths
Soft cheese from Jalisco Mexican Products Inc, California, 1985: 47 deaths
Meat containing E. coli sold by butcher in Wilshaw, Lanarkshire, and served at church lunch, 1996: 21 deaths
Peanut butter from Peanut Corporation of America, Blakely, Georgia, 2009: 9 deaths
Atomic pile
Germany has announced that it will close all its nuclear plants by 2022. They currently generate 31.8 per cent of its electricity, but it is far from the most nuclear of countries:
% electricity generated by nuclear power
France 78.1%
Slovakia 57.2%
Belgium 54.4%
Sweden 48.0%
Bulgaria 43.6%
The UK proportion is 18.4%.
Source: International Atomic Energy Authority
Comments