Parts of the series were also filmed at the Ignalina nuclear plant in Lithuania which housed a pair of the same reactors as Chernobyl. Closure of the RBMKs was a condition of Lithuania joining the EU and the plant is gradually being dismantled.

Tarmac is from tarmacadam, a combination of asphalt and macadam. ‘What’s macadam?’ I hear you ask, well its a compacted mixture of sharp gravel and fine binding material created by the very Scottish engineer John McAdam in the early 19th Century when the UK was busy re-discovering how to build proper roads. Macadam…

In the 1960s and 70s, fast breeder reactors were the next big thing. There was a perceived problem that the world would run out of high-grade uranium ore within 30 years or so; but breeders gave a way out. The problem is that the fissile 235U only makes up 0.7% of natural uranium which meant that more than 99% of the…

FaceTime please! ‘Oh I need to put this on the big screen’.

Yes, he appeared at one of Trump’s rallies leading up to the Presidential election of 2016 and was one of the first visitors to Trump after his election.

Quick America - change the locks!

Sure are a lot of ‘emergencies’ all of a sudden.

Even for the MayBot, her resignation speech was something else. The sheer brass neck of mentioning Sir Nicholas Winton in an attempt to justify her premiership. Sir Nicholas singlehandedly organised the evacuation of hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe to the UK. This was at a time when European…

Start a war in Iran.

Given his audience, could this be the second cruise ship to be quarantined for a measles epidemic?

IIRC, one of Lexus’s early selling points in Japan was that it had deodourised leather. Many Japanese did not like the smell of leather and were not fans of it, preferring cloth finishes.

The Soviet Union were the first to strap a live warhead on top of a missile and fire it. In the 25 Baykal test, an R5M intermediate range ballistic missile was fired from Kapustin Yar towards Aralsk in Kazakhstan on 2nd February 1956. The bomb exploded with a force of just 300 tonnes - not sure if this was deliberate…

And then step in promising to undo all the damages caused by the other party. It is utterly cynical politics which destroys people’s faith in politicians and government.

There was a report from the polling company YouGov today which has been looking at Labour voters since the referendum. They have been looking at voting intentions for next week’s European election and not only are voters ditching Labour, but for every one person who defects to a Brexit party (such as UKIP or the…

Unless a deal is agreed between the UK and the rest of the EU, the UK automatically leaves on 31st October this year. The soundings in Europe is that the politicians have had enough of the UK’s inability to decide what to do and that enough time and energy has been spent on Brexit - it is time for the EU to move on to…

The Shah wasn’t a good guy. What he was however, was the US and UK’s pet. He was parachuted into power when the Iranians democratically elected a government headed by Mohammed Mosaddegh who wanted to see the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) which had a stranglehold on Iranian oil production, reserves…

Has there been any more news about those supposed ‘sabotage’ attacks on two oil tankers that got the Emirates so excited earlier this week?

‘This kind of bickering between foreign generals and the U.S. military is very weird. But it also shows our allies’ unwillingness to follow us into another disaster.’

The halt in production was then followed by an email sent to employees of the broadcaster by ITV’s chief executive Carolyn McCall, which explained that this was:

You-know-who: ‘Yesterday, President Trump welcomed Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary to the White House for a bilateral meeting!’