Barometer | 4 June 2011

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.