A secret analogue user

Well it seems now that we are a totally digital household. Radio, music and TV - it's all delivered digitally in crystal clear sound and vision. Everything is so convenient as a result. We watch what we want to when we want to, we listen to the music we like and tune in to radio stations from all over the UK, and the World. OK, 'digital' has its advantages but I do long for good old analogue. I don't want to let go. It's not that I was dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. I tok to it quite well. I knew it was coming and knew of the benefits it would provide. For my parents, the transition has been long and hard. I do understand the calls for things to remain as they were. What was wrong with analogue? The truth is, nothing. It worked and has served us well. But more is better it seems. We have a plethora of TV channels but I still find myself watching the same things. The availibility of radio stations from all over the UK has provided me with 24 hour phone-ins and music of a thousand genres. LBC 'London's Biggest Conversation' is possibly my favourite station. I remember it from when I was very young. Back then it was just an FM station broadcasting to London and Kent. My nan and grandad listened to it and it would play constantly on the transistor radio they had in their kitchen. BBC Radio 5 is good at night. Again lively phone-ins provide bedtime entertainment and these too can be quite lively, sometimes harling back to the days of James Whale.
But I still find myself longing for cassettes and vinyl. I love seeing a physical tape working and a vinyl record spinning on a record deck. I love the crackle and hiss, and I miss it. MP3 has a cold crispness to it. Yes the quality is excellent, but it's missing something, almost as if it isn't alive.
It seems though that we are stuck with digital. It'll never go away, just get faster, clearer and more available. But all the while analogue remains available to us, albeit pushed aside and confined to the darkest recesses of lofts and cupboards all over the land, we should enjoy it while we can. I fell I didn't really have a chance to say goodbye properly to the analogue TV signal. It deserved much more than just a switch being thrown somewhere in Yorkshire. It had served us well and will be remembered with fondness.
So in this new digital age, where everything is clear and sharp, I'm quite happy being a 'secret analogue user'.

King's Cliffe

Something that appears to have escaped my news radar is the plight of the people who live in and around King's Cliffe, Northamptonshire. The government have gone against their protests and the opposition of the district council to agree to the dumping of low level radioactive waste in a nearby landfill site. This has quite incensed me and I can imagine how I would feel if a decision was made for me to do the same thing here.
Quite how anyone in their right mind could justify the burial of radioactive waste is beyond me - regardless of whether it it low risk or not, it still presents a risk not just now but for future generations. I understand also that the landfill is above a water table to the contamination of natural spring water in the area is highly likely.
There seems to be total disregard for the views and fears of the local residents and the authorities have adopted a typical 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude to the whole thing - and that has to be wrong. Surely the days are gone whereby if we didn't like something, we simply buried it. Burying radioactive waste cannot be the answer. Are the authorities going to supply local residents with gieger counters and provide an alarm for radiation leakage? No is most definitely the answer. In truth, no one will actually care once it's buried. The people who will care, and who will go on caring, are the people of King's Cliffe who will be worrying for their children playing in the fields, worrying whenever they drink from the tap and worrying about how much their homes will be worth. For these people, their lives will change and all because of an ill thought money-oriented decision by the machine of government here in the UK. If it's so safe, then why isn't it being buried in London or near Sandringham perhaps? There's loads of open space there. Of course it won't - it's too risky. So why risk the people of King's Cliffe...?
I support fully the people of King's Cliffe and oppose this decision to pollute a vast area of land with radioactive waste. I would suggest that their fight should be taken to the European Courts if they haven't already done so.
Wrong, wrong wrong!