Locatum

Recently some scummy type swiped a camelia and pot plant off our doorstep while we were out, probably on Easter Sunday; we live a long way down a cul-de-sac, there are plenty of people around washing cars, twitching curtains etc including our neighbourhood watch fellow and at least one police officer. About the only thing this little enclave gets in terms of 'strangers' are speculative white vans looking to trim trees and sort out your driveway. Yet no one saw anything (I have asked). OK, so sometimes s**t happens. Since around Christmas our same street has been benefitting from a local government policy (or pilot more likely) that turns out the street lamps from midnight. Fantastic! Saving energy, diminishing that bane of our lives, light pollution, opening up the sky at night, what's not to like. I am old enough to remember when street lights did just about enough for you to see the post they were attached to and to drive down unlit motorways in an old opentop enjoying...

...from the publishing of the government's response to the OS Consultation. They caught us on the hop with the changes to OS Free but we still managed to have OS maps for free ready for All Fools sunrise. Much has been made (including by me) of the hostage to fortune set by GB back in November regarding the timeframe for the outcome of the consultation, made worse by the delay of its release til 23rd December. Well, they've got away with it so to speak and the indecent haste is well papered over in the document itself, though at first glance the meat is rather lean with plenty of promised downstream engagement to flesh out the true meaning. It is evident from the foreword by John Denham (well, signed off by him) that what some of us long suspected, i.e. the need to offer, in the form of a long overdue OS Free portfolio, an answer (or a sop?) to the nagging Free our Data campaign as well as assorted nay sayers, trolls and self-proclaimed freetards (oh, and TBL, new hero to No....