Taking the rest of the day off

Science/blogging

The previous post concerning the latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain is not quite complete. It might have been entitled " The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind (perhaps)" but that hypothesis - which is not mine, I hasten to add - has now been somewhat overtaken by events.

The strain of virus is unusual, and corresponds with one being used in a research laboratory just three miles down the road from the sole outbreak so far in Surrey. The obvious conclusion is that there has been a breakdown in biosecurity.

Serious though that is, it will be a relief if that is indeed the cause, assuming the present outbreak was spotted fast enough to prevent it spreading. Full marks to Gordon Brown ( not up till now my favourite politician, at least in his role as stealth-taxing Chancellor) for cancelling his holiday plans to chair those Cobra meetings.

Yours truly currently has guest spot on Colin Randall's Salut! blog. There is to be a second instalment towards the end of next week.







If you arrive at this post late, say in a fortnight's time (that's two weeks if you're American), you will find my dreams and daemons laid bare in Salut!'s archives under "Forum" in the left hand margin.

Thanks, Colin, for the invitation.

BTW: Blogger allows me to use "Salut" as a tag, but not "Salut!" !

PS Apologies to recent visitors if they have had problems with this site, like getting multiple images as soon as they try to scroll down. The source of the problem has been pinpointed and dealt with. It was the recent post which had 10 of YouTube's thumbnails on the one page. This post has been placed into Edit mode, where it's now invisible, and will remain so until I have time to go through and replace those memory-hungry thumbnails with simple URL links - they make less demand on a computer resources.

Louise please note (if you're reading this): I've had exactly the same problem with your site, ever since you switched to the dark blue page and/or have inserted lots of images.