This seems a bit strange. I was on campus yesterday (23rd August) and noticed that the leaves are already falling from the trees:
Has Autumn come early to Sussex this year? Or is this normal? Anyone noticed anything like this elsewhere?
Follow @telescoperToday I’ve been mainly taking part in the 25th Brighton Pride celebrations. The Parade started out 90 minutes late and on a diverted route because of what appears to have been a hoax bomb (in the words of the police, a “suspect package” – no jokes please) but the atmosphere was incredible. Not only was the parade huge, but the streets were lined with thousands and thousands of people. It was all very friendly so my worries that my fear of crowds would resurface were unfounded.
I walked with the Sussex University student society. Hopefully next year there will be an official staff presence!
The Pride Carnival in Preston Park after the Parade wasn’t so interesting for me so I only stayed a couple of hours before returning to Kemptown for the Village Party, which will go on all night and all day tomorrow. I am just taking a break for a cup of tea and a bite to eat before deciding whether to rejoin the party a bit later. I am however a bit oldy for that sort of thing and may instead decide to listen to the Proms instead..
Anyway, here are a few pictures of the parade and village party..
Some great news arrived this morning. The Planning Inspectorate has given approval to the University of Sussex’s Campus Masterplan, which paves the way for some much-needed new developments on the Falmer Campus and a potential £500 million investment in the local economy. As a scientist working at the University I’m particularly delighted with this decision as it will involve much-needed new science buildings which should ease the pressure on our existing estate. The planned developments include new state-of-the-art academic and research facilities, the creation of an estimated 2400 new jobs in the local community and 2500 new student rooms on the campus, while still preserving the famous listed buildings designed by architect Sir Basil Spence when the University was founded back in the 1960s. We’re in for an exciting few years as these new developments take shape, especially a new building for Life Sciences and redevelopment of the East Slope site. The expansion of residential accommodation on campus will take some of the pressure off the housing stock in central Brighton while the other new buildings will provide much-needed replacements and extensions for some older ones that are at the end of their useful life.
Here’s a video fly-through that illustrates the general scale of the development – although the individual buildings shown are just indicative, as detailed designs are still being drawn up and each new building will need further planning permission.
But it is not just as an employee of the University that I am delighted by this news. I also live in Brighton and I honestly believe that the expansion of the University is an extremely good thing for the City, which is already turning into a thriving high-tech economy owing to the presence of so many skilled graduates and spin-out enterprises. There’s a huge amount of work to do in order to turn these plans into reality, but within a couple of years I think we’ll start to see the dividend.
Follow @telescoperWell, back from Cambridge to Brighton for a very busy working day at the University of Sussex during which I probably won’t have time to post, so I thought I’d just share a picture.This was the view from the seafront as I walked to the bus stop on my way to work this morning…
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I just came across this clip featuring our own Prof. Antonella de Santo of the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex (where she leads the Experimental Particle Physics group) talking about the group’s work on The Latest TV, a new documentary TV station based in Brighton.
Follow @telescoperI haven’t posted much about the forthcoming General Election but I couldn’t resist making a short comment about the situation here in Brighton & Hov, which is actually quite interesting. The three constituencies in the city are all marginal: Hove, Brighton Pavilion, and Brighton Kemptown. All of these were Conservative strongholds until 1997, when they all fell to the Labour party which held them until the last General Election 2010. Hove and Brighton fell to the Conservatives in 2010 while Brighton Pavilion was taken by the UK’s only Green MP, Caroline Lucas. Much of the media attention in Brighton is focussing on the latter seat, where (surprisingly to my mind), Caroline Lucas seems set to retain her place in the House of Commons having apparently succeeded in her campaign of distancing herself from the local Green Party’s abject performance in running Brighton and Hove City Council.
I am currently living in Brighton Kemptown, a two-way marginal in which the Labour candidate (Nancy Platts) is fighting the incumbent Conservative (Simon Kirby). The seat encompasses the eastern part of Brighton and the semi-rural suburbs and villages stretching out to the east of the seat. At its western end it includes Queen`s Park ward, the centre of Brighton`s vibrant gay community, then Kemptown, the council estates of Whitehawk and Moulscoomb and then, beyond the racecourse, more affluent and genteel coastal villages like Woodingdean, Saltdean and the town of Peacehaven. At the north of the seat is Brighton University`s Falmer campus – despite Moulscoomb itself being in the constituency, Moulscoomb campus lies just over the boundary marked by the A27 in Brighton Pavilion. The University of Sussex, where I work, also has a campus at Falmer, but it is also in Brighton Pavilion.
Here is a map showing the constituency boundaries:
I often get the No. 23 bus home from work in the evenings. The route of this bus takes it down the A27 to Elm Grove, where it turns left up the hill into Elm Grove which runs uphill into Hanover, which is (more-or-less) that segment at the Western boundary of Brighton Kemptown that has been eaten into by Brighton Pavilion. The bus then turns right and travels south taking it into Queen’s Park and then left again to take it along towards the Marina (the bit that sticks out into the sea).
I know it’s not a very scientific guide to the likely election result, but it is noticeable that the posters showing in the windows in the houses of the Hanover salient of Brighton Pavilion are almost exclusively for Caroline Lucas while those along the rest of journey in Kemptown are almost exclusively for Nancy Platts. It’s a remarkably sudden transition that coincides with the constituency boundary in fact. I’m not sure how much it is reasonable to infer from this observation, but I’d say based on other evidence that Caroline Lucas will probably hold Brighton Pavilion and Nancy Platts will be the next Member of Parliament for Brighton Kemptown.
But of course I could be wrong.
Follow @telescoperIt’s been a while since I posted a cute physics problem, so try this one for size. It is taken from a book of examples I was given in 1984 to illustrate a course on Physical Applications of Complex Variables I took during the a 4-week course I took in Long Vacation immediately prior to my third year as an undergraduate at Cambridge. Students intending to specialise in Theoretical Physics in Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos (as I was) had to do this course, which lasted about 10 days and was followed by a pretty tough test. Those who failed the test had to switch to Experimental Physics, and spend the rest of the summer programme doing laboratory work, while those who passed it carried on with further theoretical courses for the rest of the Long Vacation programme. I managed to get through, to find that what followed wasn’t anywhere near as tough as the first bit. I inferred that Physical Applications of Complex Variables was primarily there in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s always been an issue with Theoretical Physics courses that they attract two sorts of student: one that likes mathematical work and really wants to do theory, and another that hates experimental physics slightly more than he/she hates everything else. This course, and especially the test after it, was intended to minimize the number of the second type getting into Part II Theoretical Physics.
Another piece of information that readers might find interesting is that the lecturer for Physical Applications of Complex Variables was a young Mark Birkinshaw, now William P. Coldrick Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Bristol.
As it happens, this term I have been teaching a module on Theoretical Physics to second-year undergraduates at the University of Sussex. This covers many of the topics I studied at Cambridge in the second year, including the calculus of variations, relativistic electrodynamics, Green’s functions and, of course, complex functions. In fact I’ve used some of the notes I took as an undergraduate, and have kept all these years, to prepare material for my own lectures. I am pretty adamant therefore that the academic level at which we’re teaching this material now is no lower than it was thirty years ago.
Anyway, here’s a typically eccentric problem from the workbook, from a set of problems chosen to illustrate applications of conformal transformations (which I’ve just finished teaching this term). See how you get on with it. The first correct answer submitted through the comments box gets a round of applaud.
Two years ago I posted an item about the effects of industrial action by Brighton & Hove’s refuse collectors, the ironically-named company Cityclean. Strikes and other industrial action have happened intermittently over the last year, but it has been difficult to establish when Cityclean are working and when they are not because the typical level of service is absolutely abysmal. Apparently the latest strike is supposed to have finished, but some drivers are still “working to rule”.
The fact of the matter is that this state of affairs is the rule in Kemptown, the part of Brighton I live in. The refuse collection service is shockingly unreliable and more often than not the street resembles a rubbish tip, whether or not there’s a strike.
It’s quite obvious who is to blame for all this. Cityclean is managed, badly, by the local Council which is controlled by a shambolic Green Party more interested in splurging money on vanity projects like the infamous i360, and trying to wreck the budget-setting process, than providing decent services for local people. Given the importance the Green Party pretends to attach to recycling and sustainability, it is appalling that the fraction of refuse that is recycled is just 24%, one of the lowest rates in the entire country. The local Greens think the council should take over running bus services too. If they do as good a job of that as they do with the refuse collection service then I’ll probably be walking to work most days of the week.
I keep hearing from people living elsewhere who a flirting with the idea of voting for the Greens in the General Election and Local Elections forthcoming in May. I very much doubt that there will be any “Green Surge” in Brighton, unless it comes in the form of a noxious ooze emanating from mountains of uncollected garbage. I am pretty sure the Green will get wiped off the face of the Council in Brighton and Hove. If you’re actually thinking of voting for them elsewhere, take a look at the mess they’ve made here and I’m sure you will change your mind.
Britain’s only Green MP (Caroline Lucas) is looking to retain her seat in Brighton Pavilion at the General Election. To attempt to achieve this she has initiated a frantic campaign to distance herself from the antics of the Green Party’s representatives on the local council. I find that attitude completely hypocritical and I hope she fails. If she really doesn’t agree with her party she should stand as an independent. I won’t be voting for her anyway. Apart from everything else I’m not in her constituency..
Follow @telescoperYesterday I stumbled across a collection of old photographs of Brighton seafront. Most of the pictures are charming images of everyday life Brighton, made all the more fascinating by the fact that the city has changed relatively little and all the locations are immediately recognizable. However, in the middle of a sequence of such photographs I saw this:
The view is from the Hove side of the city, with Hove lawns to the left and the West Pier in the distance. Notice that there’s a gap in the Pier. All piers along the south coast of England were cut during the Second World War to prevent them being used as landing jetties by the enemy. I didn’t know that until I saw the gap in this picture and found out more.
There’s no date on the original, so I initially guessed that it must have been taken in 1940 when the threat of invasion during World War 2 was at its height. However, as Bryn Jones pointed out to me on Twitter, the presence of the white star on the vehicle in the foreground marks it out belonging to the US military. I did a little bit of research (via Google) and discovered that the plain white cross was only used by US troops exercising in Britain in 1942. The symbol was subsequently replaced by a white cross surrounded by a white circle, which is the marking used on all US vehicles in Normandy from 1944 onwards. The photograph must therefore have been taken some time in 1942, although the static defences were presumably put in place much earlier in the war. At a guess I’d say that it seems quite likely that US troops stationed in this area may well have used Brighton beach to train for the eventual Normandy landings
As it turns out, Brighton would have been in the front line had the Germans tried to invade England, as the following plan of Operation Sealion makes clear:
The shore defences in the photograph look pretty fierce, but the planned amphibious assault would have been preceded by parachute landings, so they may have been seized and rendered ineffective by the time the landings began.
Here is a picture of the same general area looking to the West with Hove Lawns on the right:
The beaches were out of bounds to the general public for most of the war, primarily because they were covered in mines, but in any case they would have been pretty inaccessible through all the barbed wire and other obstacles.
Although the immediate threat of invasion had receded by 1942, Brighton remained on high alert. Here is a picture I found elsewhere on the net, taken in 1943, showing a 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun stationed on the seafront not far from the Grand Hotel seen clearly in the background:
The juxtaposition of the comfortingly familiar with the shockingly unfamiliar gives these images tremendous power. It’s hard to imagine what life must have been like under the constant threat of invasion and air raids, but these pictures at least give an idea of how grim it must have been to those of us who are fortunate enough to have never been forced to experience anything like it.
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Just a few months ahead of the 2015 General Election (and some council elections, including here in Brighton) there’s something very worrying going on with the whole electoral process. For the 2014 European Parliament Elections last year I was on the electoral roll and used my vote as normal. However, last last year I discovered to my horror that I had been removed from the register here in Brighton. When I asked why, I was told by Brighton and Hove City Council (local councils oversee the election process) that I had to register afresh if I wanted to vote this May and that to do this I would have to supply personal details such as my National Insurance Number. This despite the fact that I have been resident at the same address in Brighton and have paid Council Tax at that address for two years. I had received no communication from anyone to warn me that I was being removed from the elctoral roll and, as far as I’m aware, had I not asked I simply would not have been able to vote in the forthcoming elections.
I assumed that this was just some sort of administrative error, but I have since heard from many other people who have similarly been summarily kicked off the electoral roll for no obvious reason. One has to be wary of anecdotal evidence about things like this, but the issue seems to be a national one, related to a botched attempt to move to individual voter registration, as opposed to registration associated with a residential address. People move around much more than houses do, so there is much more information to track. The new system has been rushed through without the resources needed to support the vastly increased complexity of keeping track of individuals. For the 2015 elections over a million people who should be eligible to vote will will be absent from the electoral register, and this will mostly be the young and mobile (including students) and those in private rented accommodation in urban areas. The potential inlfluence of this effective disenfranchisement on the election result is obvious.
The more I read about this the more alarmed I have become. I am really starting to believe that this is a cynical attempt by vested interests to manipulate the outcome of the General Election, which will hinge on a relatively small number of key marginal seats where the votes of students and other young people could be crucial. It looks very sinister.
Anyone else had trouble getting on the Electoral Register? Please let me know through the Comments Box.
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In the Dark 