British Gas Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to British Gas. Here they are! All 46 of them:

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town.
T. Coraghessan Boyle
As I write this, it is nine o’clock in the morning. In the two hours since I got out of bed I have showered in water heated by North Sea gas, shaved using an American razor running on electricity made from British coal, eaten a slice of bread made from French wheat, spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade, then brewed a cup of tea using leaves grown in Sri Lanka, dressed myself in clothes of Indian cotton and Australian wool, with shoes of Chinese leather and Malaysian rubber, and read a newspaper made from Finnish wood pulp and Chinese ink.
Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist (P.S.))
This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.
Christopher Hitchens
If you had ordered British troops to drive children and old people into gas chambers, none of whom had done anything wrong except they were the children of their parents, can you imagine British troops doing anything but mutiny against such orders? "Well, as a matter of fact there were some Germans, soldiers, officers, priests, doctors, and ordinary civilians who refused to obey these orders and said, 'I am not going to do this because I would not like to live and have this on my conscience. I'm not going to push them into gas chambers and then say later I was under orders and justify it by saying they were going to be pushed in by someone anyhow, and I can't stop it and other people will push them more cruelly. Therefore, it's in their best interest that I shove them in gently.' "You see, the trouble was, not enough of these people refused.
Leon Uris (QB VII)
It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thoasand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more than the day’s breath, more than dark strength--it is an imperial presence that lives and moves. People were crossing the streets and squares, going everywhere. Busses were grinding off, hundreds of them, down the long concrete viaducts, smeared with years’ pitiless use and no pleasure, into haze-gray, grease black, red lead and pale aluminum, between scrap heaps that towered high as blocks of flats, down side-shoving curves into roads clogged with Army convoys, other tall busses and canvas lorries, bicycles and cars, hitching now and then, over it all the enormous gas ruin of the sun among the smokestacks, the barrage balloons, power lines and chimneys brown as aging indoor wood, brown growing deeper, approaching black through an instant-- perhaps the true turn of the sunset-- that is wine to you, wine and comfort. The Moment was 6:43:16 British Double Summer Time: the sky beaten like Death’s drum, still humming, and Slothrop’s cock--say what? yes lookit inside his GI undershorts here’s a sneaky hardon stirring, ready to jump-- well great God where’d that come from? There is in his history, and likely, God help him, in his dossier, a peculiar sensitivity to what is revealed in the sky. (But a harden?)
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
Algren’s book opens with one of the best historical descriptions of American white trash ever written.* He traces the Linkhorn ancestry back to the first wave of bonded servants to arrive on these shores. These were the dregs of society from all over the British Isles—misfits, criminals, debtors, social bankrupts of every type and description—all of them willing to sign oppressive work contracts with future employers in exchange for ocean passage to the New World. Once here, they endured a form of slavery for a year or two—during which they were fed and sheltered by the boss—and when their time of bondage ended, they were turned loose to make their own way. In theory and in the context of history the setup was mutually advantageous. Any man desperate enough to sell himself into bondage in the first place had pretty well shot his wad in the old country, so a chance for a foothold on a new continent was not to be taken lightly. After a period of hard labor and wretchedness he would then be free to seize whatever he might in a land of seemingly infinite natural wealth. Thousands of bonded servants came over, but by the time they earned their freedom the coastal strip was already settled. The unclaimed land was west, across the Alleghenies. So they drifted into the new states—Kentucky and Tennessee; their sons drifted on to Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Drifting became a habit; with dead roots in the Old World and none in the New, the Linkhorns were not of a mind to dig in and cultivate things. Bondage too became a habit, but it was only the temporary kind. They were not pioneers, but sleazy rearguard camp followers of the original westward movement. By the time the Linkhorns arrived anywhere the land was already taken—so they worked for a while and moved on. Their world was a violent, boozing limbo between the pits of despair and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They kept drifting west, chasing jobs, rumors, homestead grabs or the luck of some front-running kin. They lived off the surface of the land, like army worms, stripping it of whatever they could before moving on. It was a day-to-day existence, and there was always more land to the west. Some stayed behind and their lineal descendants are still there—in the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were dropouts along the way: hillbillies, Okies, Arkies—they’re all the same people. Texas is a living monument to the breed. So is southern California. Algren called them “fierce craving boys” with “a feeling of having been cheated.” Freebooters, armed and drunk—a legion of gamblers, brawlers and whorehoppers. Blowing into town in a junk Model-A with bald tires, no muffler and one headlight … looking for quick work, with no questions asked and preferably no tax deductions. Just get the cash, fill up at a cut-rate gas station and hit the road, with a pint on the seat and Eddy Arnold on the radio moaning good back-country tunes about home sweet home, that Bluegrass sweetheart still waitin, and roses on Mama’s grave. Algren left the Linkhorns in Texas, but anyone who drives the Western highways knows they didn’t stay there either. They kept moving until one day in the late 1930s they stood on the spine of a scrub-oak California hill and looked down on the Pacific Ocean—the end of the road.
Hunter S. Thompson (The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (The Gonzo Papers Series Book 1))
There are certain things that you have to be British, or at least older than me, or possibly both, to appreciate: skiffle music, salt-cellars with a single hole, Marmite (an edible yeast extract with the visual properties of an industrial lubricant), Gracie Fields singing “Sally,” George Formby doing anything, jumble sales, making sandwiches from bread you’ve sliced yourself, really milky tea, boiled cabbage, the belief that household wiring is an interesting topic for conversation, steam trains, toast made under a gas grill, thinking that going to choose wallpaper with your mate constitutes a reasonably fun day out, wine made out of something other than grapes, unheated bedrooms and bathrooms, erecting windbreaks on a beach (why, pray, are you there if you need a windbreak?), and cricket. There may be one or two others that don’t occur to me at the moment.
Bill Bryson (Notes from a Small Island)
per hour. Handbrake knew that he could keep up with the best of them. Ambassadors might look old-fashioned and slow, but the latest models had Japanese engines. But he soon learned to keep it under seventy. Time and again, as his competitors raced up behind him and made their impatience known by the use of their horns and flashing high beams, he grudgingly gave way, pulling into the slow lane among the trucks, tractors and bullock carts. Soon, the lush mustard and sugarcane fields of Haryana gave way to the scrub and desert of Rajasthan. Four hours later, they reached the rocky hills surrounding the Pink City, passing in the shadow of the Amber Fort with its soaring ramparts and towering gatehouse. The road led past the Jal Mahal palace, beached on a sandy lake bed, into Jaipur’s ancient quarter. It was almost noon and the bazaars along the city’s crenellated walls were stirring into life. Beneath faded, dusty awnings, cobblers crouched, sewing sequins and gold thread onto leather slippers with curled-up toes. Spice merchants sat surrounded by heaps of lal mirch, haldi and ground jeera, their colours as clean and sharp as new watercolor paints. Sweets sellers lit the gas under blackened woks of oil and prepared sticky jalebis. Lassi vendors chipped away at great blocks of ice delivered by camel cart. In front of a few of the shops, small boys, who by law should have been at school, swept the pavements, sprinkling them with water to keep down the dust. One dragged a doormat into the road where the wheels of passing vehicles ran over it, doing the job of carpet beaters. Handbrake honked his way through the light traffic as they neared the Ajmeri Gate, watching the faces that passed by his window: skinny bicycle rickshaw drivers, straining against the weight of fat aunties; wild-eyed Rajasthani men with long handlebar moustaches and sun-baked faces almost as bright as their turbans; sinewy peasant women wearing gold nose rings and red glass bangles on their arms; a couple of pink-faced goras straining under their backpacks; a naked sadhu, his body half covered in ash like a caveman. Handbrake turned into the old British Civil Lines, where the roads were wide and straight and the houses and gardens were set well apart. Ajay Kasliwal’s residence was number
Tarquin Hall (The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri, #1))
The Ukraine is still under Russian influence, even if they did give us independence. Ethnic Russians number 22% of our population. The facts remain they will control us economically. We will continue to owe them monetarily for the natural gas, the petroleum and all other industrial tools we need. After they’ve exhausted our scant resources and we have run up large bills, they will just walk right back in and take us over again. Monitor it closely in the years to come, Nicholas, you will see I am right. It could be easy to disregard this movement of mine, if it weren’t for the queer twists and turns history takes from time to time.
Nicholas Anderson (NOC: Non-Official Cover: British Secret Operations (The NOC Trilogy #1))
Because of the extreme heat fission generates, the reactor core must be kept cool at all costs. This is particularly important with an RBMK, which operates at an, “astonishingly high temperature,” relative to other reactor types, of 500°C with hotspots of up to 700°C, according to British nuclear expert Dr. Eric Voice. A typical PWR has an operating temperature of about 275°C. A few different kinds of coolant are used in different reactors, from gas to air to liquid metal to salt, but Chernobyl’s uses the same as most other reactors: light water, meaning it is just regular water. The plant was originally going to be fitted with gas-cooled reactors, but this was eventually changed because of a shortage of the necessary equipment.75 Water is pumped into the bottom of the reactor at high pressure (1000psi, or 65 atmospheres), where it boils and passes up, out of the reactor and through a condensator that separates steam from water. All remaining water is pushed through another pump and fed back into the reactor. The steam, meanwhile, enters a steam turbine, which turns and generates electricity. Each RBMK reactor produces 5,800 tons of steam per hour.76 Having passed through this turbogenerator, the steam is condensed back into water and fed back to the pumps, where it begins its cycle again.
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
Hitler derived several things from his experience and achievements in World War I, without which his rise to power in 1933 would have been at the least problematical, and at the most inconceivable. Hitler survived the war as a combat soldier—a rifle carrier—in a frontline infantry regiment. The achievement was an extraordinary one based on some combination of near-miraculous luck and combat skill. The interpretive fussing over whether or not Hitler was a combat soldier because he spent most of the war in the part of the regiment described as regimental headquarters can be laid to rest as follows: Any soldier in an infantry regiment on an active front in the west in World War I must be considered to have been a combat soldier. Hitler’s authorized regimental weapon was the Mauser boltaction, magazine-fed rifle. This gives a basic idea of what Hitler could be called upon to do in his assignment at the front. As a regimental runner, he carried messages to the battalions and line companies of the regiment, and the more important ones had to be delivered under outrageously dangerous circumstances involving movement through artillery fire and, particularly later in the war, poison gas and the omnipresent rifle fire of the skilled British sniper detachments. --Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, p. 96
Russel H.S. Stolfi (Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny (German Studies))
He swore sharply, David Jones’s still-so-familiar voice coming out of that stranger’s body. “Do you have any idea how unbelievably hard it’s been to get you alone?” Had she finally started hallucinating? But he took off his glasses, and she could see his eyes more clearly and . . . “It’s you,” she breathed, tears welling. “It’s really you.” She reached for him, but he stepped back. Sisters Helen and Grace were hurrying across the compound, coming to see what the ruckus was, shading their eyes and peering so they could see in through the screens. “You can’t let on that you know me,” Jones told Molly quickly, his voice low, rough. “You can’t tell anyone—not even your friend the priest during confession, do you understand?” “Are you in some kind of danger?” she asked him. Dear God, he was so thin. And was the cane necessary or just a prop? “Stand still, will you, so I can—” “No. Don’t. We can’t . . .” He backed away again. “If you say anything, Mol, I swear, I’ll vanish, and I will not come back. Unless . . . if you don’t want me here—and I don’t blame you if you don’t—” “No!” was all she managed to say before Sister Helen opened the door and looked from the mess on the floor to Molly’s stricken expression. “Oh, dear.” “I’m afraid it’s my fault,” Jones said in a British accent, in a voice that was completely different from his own, as Helen rushed to Molly’s side. “My fault entirely. I brought Miss Anderson some bad news. I didn’t realize just how devastating it would be.” Molly started crying. It was more than just a good way to hide her laughter at that accent—those were real tears streaming down her face and she couldn’t stop them. Helen led her to one of the tables, helped her sit down. “Oh, my dear,” the nun said, kneeling in front of her, concern on her round face, holding her hand. “What happened?” “We have a mutual friend,” Jones answered for her. “Bill Bolten. He found out I was heading to Kenya, and he thought if I happened to run into Miss Anderson that she would want to know that a friend of theirs recently . . . well, passed. Cat’s out of the bag, right? Fellow name of Grady Morant, who went by the alias of Jones.” “Oh, dear,” Helen said again, hand to her mouth in genuine sympathy. Jones leaned closer to the nun, his voice low, but not low enough for Molly to miss hearing. “His plane went down—burned—gas tank exploded . . . Ghastly mess. Not a prayer that he survived.” Molly buried her face in her hands, hardly able to think. “Bill was worried that she might’ve heard it first from someone else,” he said. “But apparently she hadn’t.” Molly shook her head, no. News did travel fast via the grapevine. Relief workers tended to know other relief workers and . . . She could well have heard about Jones’s death without him standing right in front of her. Wouldn’t that have been awful?
Suzanne Brockmann (Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9))
Gallipoli was one of a series of military ‘Easterner’ adventures launched without proper analysis of the global strategic situation, without consideration of the local tactical situation, ignoring logistical realities, underestimating the strength of the opposition and predicated on a hugely optimistic assessment of the military capabilities of their own troops. Not for nothing is hubris regarded as the ‘English disease’. But the Gallipoli Campaign was a serious matter: vital resources had been drawn away from where it really mattered. The Turks were all but helpless if left on their own. They had tried to launch an ambitious attack across the Sinai Desert on the Suez Canal but had been easily thwarted. Gallipoli achieved nothing but to provide the Turks with the opportunity to slaughter British and French troops in copious numbers in a situation in which everything was in the defenders’ favour. Meanwhile, back on the Western Front, was the real enemy: the German Empire. Men, guns and munitions were in the process of being deployed to Gallipoli during the first British offensive at Neuve Chapelle; they were still there when the Germans launched their deadly gas attack at Ypres in April, during the debacles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, and during the first ‘great push’ at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. At sea Jellicoe was facing the High Seas Fleet which could pick its moment to contest the ultimate control of the seas. This was the real war – Gallipoli was nothing but a foolish sideshow.
Peter Hart (The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War)
Professional Bio of Shahin Shardi, P.Eng. Materials Engineer Welding and Pressure Equipment Inspector, QA/QC Specialist Shahin Shardi is a Materials Engineer with experience in integrity management, inspection of pressure equipment, quality control/assurance of large scale oil and gas projects and welding inspection. He stared his career in trades which helped him understand fundamentals of operation of a construction site and execution of large scale projects. This invaluable experience provided him with boots on the ground perspective of requirements of running a successful project and job site. After obtaining an engineering degree from university of British Columbia, he started a career in asset integrity management for oil and gas facilities and inspection of pressure equipment in Alberta, Canada. He has been involved with numerus maintenance shutdowns at various facilities providing engineering support to the maintenance, operations and project personnel regarding selection, repair, maintenance, troubleshooting and long term reliability of equipment. In addition he has extensive experience in area of quality control and assurance of new construction activities in oil and gas industry. He has performed Owner’s Inspector and welding inspector roles in this area. Shahin has extensively applied industry codes of constructions such as ASME Pressure Vessel Code (ASME VIII), Welding (ASME IX), Process Piping (ASME B31.3), Pipe Flanges (ASME B16.5) and various pressure equipment codes and standards. Familiarity with NDT techniques like magnetic particle, liquid penetrant, eddy current, ultrasonic and digital radiography is another valuable knowledge base gained during various projects. Some of his industry certificates are CWB Level 2 Certified Welding Inspector, API 510 Pressure Vessel Inspector, Alberta ABSA In-Service Pressure Vessel Inspector and Saskatchewan TSASK Pressure Equipment Inspector. Shahin is a professional member of Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.
Shahin Shardi
Few grown humans can normally survive a fall of much more than twenty-five or thirty feet, though there have been some notable exceptions—none more memorable perhaps than that of a British airman in World War II named Nicholas Alkemade. In the late winter of 1944, while on a bombing run over Germany, Flight Sergeant Alkemade, the tail gunner on a British Lancaster bomber, found himself in a literally tight spot when his plane was hit by enemy flak and quickly filled with smoke and flames. Tail gunners on Lancasters couldn’t wear parachutes because the space in which they operated was too confined, and by the time Alkemade managed to haul himself out of his turret and reach for his parachute, he found it was on fire and beyond salvation. He decided to leap from the plane anyway rather than perish horribly in flames, so he hauled open a hatch and tumbled out into the night. He was three miles above the ground and falling at 120 miles per hour. “It was very quiet,” Alkemade recalled years later, “the only sound being the drumming of aircraft engines in the distance, and no sensation of falling at all. I felt suspended in space.” Rather to his surprise, he found himself to be strangely composed and at peace. He was sorry to die, of course, but accepted it philosophically, as something that happened to airmen sometimes. The experience was so surreal and dreamy that Alkemade was never certain afterward whether he lost consciousness, but he was certainly jerked back to reality when he crashed through the branches of some lofty pine trees and landed with a resounding thud in a snowbank, in a sitting position. He had somehow lost both his boots, and had a sore knee and some minor abrasions, but otherwise was quite unharmed. Alkemade’s survival adventures did not quite end there. After the war, he took a job in a chemical plant in Loughborough, in the English Midlands. While he was working with chlorine gas, his gas mask came loose, and he was instantly exposed to dangerously high levels of the gas. He lay unconscious for fifteen minutes before co-workers noticed his unconscious form and dragged him to safety. Miraculously, he survived. Some time after that, he was adjusting a pipe when it ruptured and sprayed him from head to foot with sulfuric acid. He suffered extensive burns but again survived. Shortly after he returned to work from that setback, a nine-foot-long metal pole fell on him from a height and very nearly killed him, but once again he recovered. This time, however, he decided to tempt fate no longer. He took a safer job as a furniture salesman and lived out the rest of his life without incident. He died peacefully, in bed, aged sixty-four in 1987. —
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
the military-industrial-scientific complex, because today’s wars are scientific productions. The world’s military forces initiate, fund and steer a large part of humanity’s scientific research and technological development. When World War One bogged down into interminable trench warfare, both sides called in the scientists to break the deadlock and save the nation. The men in white answered the call, and out of the laboratories rolled a constant stream of new wonder-weapons: combat aircraft, poison gas, tanks, submarines and ever more efficient machine guns, artillery pieces, rifles and bombs. 33. German V-2 rocket ready to launch. It didn’t defeat the Allies, but it kept the Germans hoping for a technological miracle until the very last days of the war. {© Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library.} Science played an even larger role in World War Two. By late 1944 Germany was losing the war and defeat was imminent. A year earlier, the Germans’ allies, the Italians, had toppled Mussolini and surrendered to the Allies. But Germany kept fighting on, even though the British, American and Soviet armies were closing in. One reason German soldiers and civilians thought not all was lost was that they believed German scientists were about to turn the tide with so-called miracle weapons such as the V-2 rocket and jet-powered aircraft. While the Germans were working on rockets and jets, the American Manhattan Project successfully developed atomic bombs. By the time the bomb was ready, in early August 1945, Germany had already surrendered, but Japan was fighting on. American forces were poised to invade its home islands. The Japanese vowed to resist the invasion and fight to the death, and there was every reason to believe that it was no idle threat. American generals told President Harry S. Truman that an invasion of Japan would cost the lives of a million American soldiers and would extend the war well into 1946. Truman decided to use the new bomb. Two weeks and two atom bombs later, Japan surrendered unconditionally and the war was over. But science is not just about offensive weapons. It plays a major role in our defences as well. Today many Americans believe that the solution to terrorism is technological rather than political. Just give millions more to the nanotechnology industry, they believe, and the United States could send bionic spy-flies into every Afghan cave, Yemenite redoubt and North African encampment. Once that’s done, Osama Bin Laden’s heirs will not be able to make a cup of coffee without a CIA spy-fly passing this vital information back to headquarters in Langley.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
I went to that show, although I remember very little about it. History relates, though, that also in the audience that night was Ian McLagan, later the keyboard player with the Faces, and that the support act was a band called Jeff Beck and the Tridents. But that’s how tight it all seemed to be in those days: at any time, almost everyone who would later matter would be standing around in the same place. One unfortunate gas explosion under the wrong club on the wrong night, and three-quarters of the history of British rock music would have been taken out in one go.
Rod Stewart (Rod: The Autobiography)
Eight months [after 9/11], after the most intensive international investigation in history, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation informed the press that they still didn't know who did it. He said they had suspicions. The suspicions were that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan but implemented in Germany and the United Arab Emirates, and, of course, in the United States. After 9/11, Bush II essentially ordered the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, and they temporized. They might have handed him over, actually. They asked for evidence that he was involved in the attacks of 9/11. And, of course, the government, first of all, couldn't given them any evidence because they didn't have any. But secondly, they reacted with total contempt. How can you ask us for evidence if we want you to hand somebody over? What lèse-majesté is this? So Bush simply informed the people of Afghanistan that we're going to bomb you until the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. He said nothing about overthrowing the Taliban. That came three weeks later, when British admiral Michael Boyce, the head of the British Defense Staff, announced to the Afghans that we're going to continue bombing you until you overthrow your government. This fits the definition of terrorism exactly, but it's much worse. It's aggression. How did the Afghans feel about it? We actually don't know. There were leading Afghan anti-Taliban activists who were bitterly opposed to the bombing. In fact, a couple of weeks after the bombing started, the U.S. favorite, Abdul Haq, considered a great martyr in Afghanistan, was interviewed about this. He said that the Americans are carrying out the bombing only because they want to show their muscle. They're undermining our efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within, which we can do. If, instead of killing innocent Afghans, they help us, that's what will happen. Soon after that, there was a meeting in Peshawar in Pakistan of a thousand tribal leaders, some from Afghanistan who trekked across the border, some from Pakistan. They disagreed on a lot of things, but they were unanimous on one thing: stop the bombing. That was after about a month. Could the Taliban have been overthrown from within? It's very likely. There were strong anti-Taliban forces. But the United States didn't want that. It wanted to invade and conquer Afghanistan and impose its own rule. ...There are geostrategic reasons. They're not small. How dominant they are in the thinking of planners we can only speculate. But there is a reason why everybody has been invading Afghanistan since Alexander the Great. The country is in a highly strategic position relative to Central Asian, South Asia, and the Middle East. There are specific reasons in the present case having to do with pipeline projects, which are in the background. We don't know how important these considerations are, but since the 1990s the United States has been trying hard to establish the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAPI)from Turkmenistan, which has a huge amount of natural gas, to India. It has to go through Kandahar, in fact. So Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India are all involved. The United States wants the pipeline for two reasons. One reason is to try to prevent Russia from having control of natural gas. That's the new "great game": Who controls Central Asian resources? The other reason has to do with isolating Iran. The natural way to get the energy resources India needs is from Iran, a pipeline right from Iran to Pakistan to India. The United States wants to block this from happening in the worst way. It's a complicated business. Pakistan has just agreed to let the pipeline run from Iran to Pakistan. The question is whether India will try to join in. The TAPI pipeline would be a good weapon to try to undercut that.
Noam Chomsky (Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire (American Empire Project))
Emissions of carbon dioxide reasonable commercial For those who do not know each other with the phrase "carbon footprint" and its consequences or is questionable, which is headed "reasonable conversion" is a fast lens here. Statements are described by the British coal climatic believe. "..The GC installed (fuel emissions) The issue has directly or indirectly affected by a company or work activities, products," only in relation to the application, especially to introduce a special procedure for the efforts of B. fight against carbon crank function What is important? Carbon dioxide ", uh, (on screen), the main fuel emissions" and the main result of global warming, improve a process that determines the atmosphere in the air in the heat as greenhouse gases greenhouse, carbon dioxide is reduced by the environment, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs more typically classified as). The consequences are disastrous in the sense of life on the planet. The exchange is described at a reasonable price in Wikipedia as "...geared a social movement and market-based procedures, especially the objectives of the development of international guidelines and improve local sustainability." The activity is for the price "reasonable effort" as well as social and environmental criteria as part of the same in the direction of production. It focuses exclusively on exports under the auspices of the acquisition of the world's nations to coffee most international destinations, cocoa, sugar, tea, vegetables, wine, specially designed, refreshing fruits, bananas, chocolate and simple. In 2007 trade, the conversion of skilled gross sales serious enough alone suffered due the supermarket was in the direction of approximately US $ 3.62 billion to improve (2.39 million), rich environment and 47% within 12 months of the calendar year. Fair trade is often providing 1-20% of gross sales in their classification of medicines in Europe and North America, the United States. ..Properly Faith in the plan ... cursed interventions towards closing in failure "vice president Cato Industries, appointed to inquire into the meaning of fair trade Brink Lindsey 2003 '. "Sensible changes direction Lindsay inaccurate provides guidance to the market in a heart that continues to change a design style and price of the unit complies without success. It is based very difficult, and you must deliver or later although costs Rule implementation and reduces the cost if you have a little time in the mirror. You'll be able to afford the really wide range plan alternatives to products and expenditures price to pay here. With the efficient configuration package offered in the interpretation question fraction "which is a collaboration with the Carbon Fund worldwide, and acceptable substitute?" In the statement, which tend to be small, and more? They allow you to search for carbon dioxide transport and delivery. All vehicles are responsible dioxide pollution, but they are the worst offenders? Aviation. Quota of the EU said that the greenhouse gas jet fuel greenhouse on the basis of 87% since 1990 years Boeing Company, Boeing said more than 5 747 liters of fuel burns kilometer. Paul Charles, spokesman for Virgin Atlantic, said flight CO² gas burned in different periods of rule. For example: (. The United Kingdom) Jorge Chavez airport to fly only in the vast world of Peru to London Heathrow with British Family Islands 6.314 miles (10162 km) works with about 31,570 liters of kerosene, which produces changes in only 358 for the incredible carbon. Delivery. John Vidal, Environment Editor parents argue that research on the oil company BP and researchers from the Department of Physics and the environment in Germany Wising said that about once a year before the transport height of 600 to 800 million tons. This is simply nothing more than twice in Colombia and more than all African nations spend together.
PointHero
Climate change has never received the crisis treatment from our leaders, despite the fact that it carries the risk of destroying lives on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings. The cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us are necessary in order to greatly reduce the risk of catastrophe are treated as nothing more than gentle suggestions, actions that can be put off pretty much indefinitely. Clearly, what gets declared a crisis is an expression of power and priorities as much as hard facts. But we need not be spectators in all this: politicians aren’t the only ones with the power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too. Slavery wasn’t a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn’t a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn’t a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn’t a crisis until the anti-apartheid movement turned it into one.
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate)
Campos de concentración Una gran línea aérea. Tres cadenas de farmacias. Cuatro bancos dominantes. Tres empresas de telefonía móvil. Tres generadores de energía. Dos grandes productores de pollo. Dos de licores. Monopolio del tabaco. Casi monopolio de la cerveza. Podemos pasar revista a prácticamente cualquier mercado relevante en Chile y la conclusión es la misma. Los monopolios y oligopolios son la regla de la economía. Veamos algunos datos. En las farmacias, tres cadenas (Cruz Verde, Fasa y Salcobrand) concentran el 95% de las ventas. En los bancos, cuatro compañías (Chile, Santander, Estado y BCI) suman el 65% de las colocaciones. El transporte aéreo nacional está en un 74% en manos de una sola compañía (Lan). Tres proveedores de telefonía móvil (Movistar, Entel y Claro) se reparten el 97% del mercado. Dos productores de pollos (Súper Pollo y Ariztía) acumulan el 71% de las ventas. CCU y Capel acaparan el 69% de las ventas de licores. British American Tobacco Chile (BAT Chile) tiene el 95% del mercado de los cigarrillos. CCU, el 87% en las cervezas.16 Y la generación eléctrica se concentra en 74% entre Endesa, Colbún y Gener. Más aun: estos monopolios y oligopolios están estrechamente entrelazados, con los grandes grupos económicos repitiéndose en las posiciones dominantes en diferentes mercados. El Grupo Luksic tiene una fuerte posición en bancos (Banco de Chile), bebidas (CCU), transporte marítimo (Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores), combustibles (ENEX), manufacturas (Madeco), televisión (Canal 13) y minería (Antofagasta Minerals). El Grupo Matte participa en generación eléctrica (Colbún), industria forestal (CMPC), telecomunicaciones (Entel) y banca (Bice). El Grupo Angelini está en combustibles (Copec), gas (Metrogas), forestal (Arauco) y pesca (Corpesca).
Daniel Matamala (Poderoso caballero. El peso del dinero en la política chilena (Spanish Edition))
The Arab people are second to none in regretting the woes which have been inflicted on the Jews of Europe by Europeans. But the question of these Jews should not be confused with Zionism, for there can be no greater injustice than solving the problems of the Jews of Europe by committing another injustice on us, the Palestinian Arabs. The Europeans should not solve their own problems by creating problems for other people.” During the hearings, four UNSCOP members went to Haifa just as the Exodus was being towed into port by British ships. They watched as British soldiers used rifle butts, hose pipes, and tear gas on the death camp survivors. These people were then locked up in cages and shipped out of Palestine. The four UNSCOP members returned to Jerusalem pale with shock. Ultimately, UNCSOP recommended the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. On
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
The Arab people are second to none in regretting the woes which have been inflicted on the Jews of Europe by Europeans. But the question of these Jews should not be confused with Zionism, for there can be no greater injustice than solving the problems of the Jews of Europe by committing another injustice on us, the Palestinian Arabs. The Europeans should not solve their own problems by creating problems for other people.” During the hearings, four UNSCOP members went to Haifa just as the Exodus was being towed into port by British ships. They watched as British soldiers used rifle butts, hose pipes, and tear gas on the death camp survivors. These people were then locked up in cages and shipped out of Palestine. The four UNSCOP members returned to Jerusalem pale with shock. Ultimately, UNCSOP recommended the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. On November 29, 1947, all of Palestine—Arab and Jew—gathered around their radios to listen to the General Assembly of the United Nations vote on the UNSCOP proposal for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. If it passed, the Jews would finally have their state. If it failed, the Jews would be forced to live in a single state of Palestine as a minority dominated by the Arabs. The outcome of the vote was very much in doubt. The entire Muslim world opposed partition. Moreover, a two-thirds majority was required for the motion to pass. Behind the scenes, however, American diplomats worked hard to push it through. In the end, the tally was thirty-three in favor, thirteen opposed, and ten abstentions. The motion carried.
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
I think he would be very proud of the continuing legacy of Britain in those places around the world, and particularly I think he would be amazed at India, the world’s largest democracy - a stark contrast, of course, with other less fortunate countries that haven’t had the benefit of British rule. If I can say this on the record - why not? It’s true, it’s true.’ - Boris Johnson of Winston Churchill, on whom he has just finished writing a book ‘I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes. It would spread a lively terror.’ ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ - Winston Churchill
Akala (Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire)
The changed relationship may be seen in a simple example, that traditional Middle-Eastern indulgence, a cup of coffee. Coffee originally came from Ethiopia. It was brought up both shores of the Red Sea, through Arabia and Egypt, to Syria and to Turkey, and then exported to Europe. Sugar came from Persia and India. For a long time, both coffee and sugar were imports to Europe, either through or from the Middle East. But then the colonial powers found that they could grow coffee and sugar more abundantly and more cheaply in their new colonies. They did this so thoroughly and successfully that they began to export coffee and sugar to the Ottoman lands. By the end of the eighteenth century, if a Turk or Arab took the traditional indulgence, a cup of sweetened coffee, in all probability the coffee came from Dutch Java or Spanish America, the sugar from the British or French West Indies; only the hot water was local. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even that ceased to be true, as European concessionary companies took over the water supply and gas supply in Middle Eastern cities.
Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East)
For the entire EU, natural gas comprises about 25 percent of energy consumption. That means that Russian gas, at about 35 percent of total gas consumption, provides 9 percent of Europe’s overall energy. After Russia, the next largest source of gas is “indigenous” or “domestic supplies,” largely from the Groningen field in the Netherlands and the British sector of the North Sea. Norway, though not a member of the EU, is highly integrated with it economically, and supplies 24 percent of the EU’s gas; about 9 percent comes from North Africa, mainly Algeria.
Daniel Yergin (The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations)
MAY 10, THE day that Roosevelt issued his nonresponse to Churchill’s plea for U.S. belligerency, German bombers returned to London. As devastating as the previous raids had been, none came close to the savagery and destructiveness of this new firestorm. By the next morning, more than two thousand fires were raging out of control across the city, from Hammersmith in the west to Romford in the east, some twenty miles away. The damage to London’s landmarks was catastrophic. Queen’s Hall, the city’s premier concert venue, lay in ruins, while more than a quarter of a million books were incinerated and a number of galleries destroyed at the British Museum. Bombs smashed into St. James’s Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and Parliament. The medieval Westminster Hall, though badly damaged, was saved, but not so the House of Commons chamber, the scene of some of the most dramatic events in modern British history. Completely gutted by fire, the little hall, with its vaulted, timbered ceiling, was nothing but a mound of debris, gaping open to the sky. Every major railroad station but one was put out of action for weeks, as were many Underground stations and lines. A third of the streets in greater London were impassable, and almost a million people were without gas, water, and electricity. The death toll was even more calamitous: never in London’s history had so many of its residents—1,436—died in a single night.
Lynne Olson (Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour)
So, if people don't want a war - are opposed to a war - how do you get away with it? You change public opinion and manufacture consent, that's how. You construct a carefully organised deception. A well-crafted and perfectly executed lie. Stage a false flag attacks, created by our own security services, blame it on terrorists, blow up British or US soldiers, bomb our buildings, fly planes into them, lie about weapons of mass destruction that can annihilate us in forty-five minutes flat. And bombard people with it in the media. Terrorists! Terrorism! Cells! Al-Qaeda! Isis! So every single time you turn on the new or read a paper, it's there. Despite the fact that statistically, you're more likely to be killed in a car accident or by your own bathtub than killed by a terrorist! And all the while, they're hiding the real reasons. Oil and gas. Gold. Regime change. Land. Power. Money. So they carry on until the public gets scared and angry, and yes, let's bomb these bastards! And how dare these people threaten and attack us! Then they want the war. The public are practically begging for it by then! Like George Orwell said, "The people believe what the media tells them". And if you control the media, the money, the politics, and the military, you control the whole systems.
Sibel Hodge (Untouchable)
Perley Smith of the 7th British Columbians remarked, “They were not very sanitary in their mode of living and they left their dead on top of the ground and the dirt and filth was terrible. We had used the water that the French were using, but when it was baled down we found there was a number
James L. McWilliams (Gas! The Battle for Ypres, 1915 (The History of World War One))
General Foch was unwilling to commit troops in the numbers required to retake the lost ground. He had talked to his British counterpart of massive reinforcements but had ordered his subordinate, Putz, to carry out the attacks without anything approaching the strength required, in either infantry or artillery. Thus none of the French counterattacks had the slightest chance of success.
James L. McWilliams (Gas! The Battle for Ypres, 1915 (The History of World War One))
Sir John French, for his part, had co-operated fully with an uncharacteristic gullible acceptance of Foch’s promises. It had soon become evident that the roles had become reversed; the British were now expected to retake the lost ground assisted by the French. Sir John had evidently begun to realize this and had even opposed the idea. Yet every time he had met with the bombastic Foch he had come away committed to yet another hasty and ill-prepared attack.
James L. McWilliams (Gas! The Battle for Ypres, 1915 (The History of World War One))
In 1799, the British chemist Humphry Davy was experimenting with different gases, or ‘airs’, at the Pneumatic Institution for Inhalation Gas Therapy in Bristol, searching for treatments for tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. In what seems to have been a time-honoured tradition, Davy experimented on himself, by inhaling his new discoveries to judge their effects. Having synthesized some nitrous oxide, he inhaled a few breaths and found it produced a sensation of euphoria. He later found that nitrous oxide had analgesic properties which temporarily relieved dental pain and headache. Davy recorded in his notebook that nitrous oxide might prove useful in surgery, but thereafter became more interested in its recreational effects, and gave it its common name, ‘laughing gas’. No-one seems to have paid any attention to the idea that nitrous oxide might permit painless surgery. Davy and his co-workers at the Pneumatic Institution invited distinguished visitors to inhale nitrous oxide to experience its pleasurable effects. These demonstrations were soon repeated by students of medicine and chemistry, and then eventually by carnival showmen in both Britain and America. It was to be almost half a century before nitrous oxide was to take its place as a general anaesthetic.
Aidan O'Donnell (Anaesthesia: A Very Short Introduction)
Hundreds of millions of years ago, our distant cousins—various phytoplankton and zooplankton, cycads and ferns—lived lives as full of passion and drama as any, and then went ahead and died. Buried in mud or water and deprived of oxygen, they were compressed over the centuries by layer after layer of sediment and stone. Slowly, pressure and heat transformed them into a black and viscous goo, into gas that stinks of flatulence, and into strange, hard, oily lumps. Cut to the early nineteenth century, when British industrialists found a use for these otherwise unpleasant substances, the transformed bodies of the earth’s
Ben Ehrenreich (Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time)
Reciprocating (piston) engines rotating aircraft propellers dominated commercial aviation until the late 1950s, but in 1943 both the UK and Germany were preparing to deploy their first jet fighter planes (the Gloster Meteor and the Messerschmitt 262, respectively, with the Germans being first in combat) powered by turbojet, continuous-combustion gas turbines. While the Mustang, America’s most successful propeller fighter, could reach about 630 km/h and the British Supermarine Spitfire less than 600 km/h, the maximum speeds of the two pioneering jet fighters, 970 km/h and 900 km/h, approached the speed of sound.
Vaclav Smil (Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure)
Realizing that solar had become essential to oil production, petroleum firms set up their own photovoltaic subsidiaries. Exxon became, in 1973, the first commercial manufacturer of solar panels; the second, a year later, was a joint venture with the oil giant Mobil. (Exxon and Mobil merged in 1999.) The Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), another oil colossus, ran the world’s biggest solar company until it was acquired by Royal Dutch Shell, the oil and gas multinational. Later the title of world’s biggest solar company passed to British Petroleum (now known as BP). By 1980 petroleum firms owned six of the ten biggest U.S. solar firms, representing most of the world’s photovoltaic manufacturing capacity.
Charles C. Mann (The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World)
oil and natural gas, though production peaked at the end of the twentieth century and
Philip Norton (The British Polity)
M.C.A. Henniker. 1951. Memoirs of a Junior Officer. HMSO, p. 235. M.C.A. Henniker’s company was engaged in building a blockhouse on a hilltop overlooking the Khyber Pass. Pathans could have, but they did not stop the life-giving water supply to the British, yet the British army used poison gas on the Frontier Pathans in the early twentieth century. This was only to be expected because the British Manual of Military Law stated that the rules of war applied only to conflict ‘between civilized nations’. In fact, the Manual of 1914 clarified that ‘they do not apply in wars with uncivilized States and tribes’.
Rajiv Dogra (Durand's Curse: A Line Across the Pathan Heart)
In spring, when his allergy to pollen became unbearable, he would cover his face with a gas mask (the British government had distributed them throughout the population at the start of the war), sowing panic among those who saw him pass and imagined an attack was imminent.
Benjamín Labatut (When We Cease to Understand the World)
[Suicide rates in 20th century Britain] goes way up when town gas first makes its way into British homes and comes plunging down as the changeover to natural gas begins in the late 1960s. In that 10 year window as town gas was being slowly phased out, thousands of deaths were prevented.
Malcolm Gladwell (Talking To Strangers: What We Don't Know About Strangers)
Handguns are the suicide method of choice in the US... Handguns are uniquely deadly. Handguns are America's town gas. What would happen if the US did with the British did and somehow eradicated its leading cause of suicide? It's not hard to imagine. It would uncouple the suicidal from their chosen method and those few who were determined to try again would be forced to choose from far less deadly options such as overdosing on pills which is 55 times less likely to result in death than using a gun. A very conservative estimate is that banning handguns would save 10,000 lives a year just from thwarted suicides. That's a lot of people.
Malcolm Gladwell (Talking To Strangers: What We Don't Know About Strangers)
The part that kills me is their latest wave of commercials.” Serge tipped back his bottled water. “The message now is that they’re against oil. How stupid do they think we are? BP’s new slogan: ‘Beyond Petroleum.’ The name of the damn company is British fucking Petroleum. They’re not beyond petroleum; they’re waist-deep in North Sea crude with the gas pump up our ass …” “Serge, your head’s turning that color again.” “… Or the ones showing cute Alaskan wildlife, wheat fields and wind farms, with the voice-over from a woman who sounds like she’s ready to fuck: ‘Imagine an oil company that cares.’ Holy Orwell, why not ‘Marlboro: We’re in the business of helping you quit smoking, so buy a carton today! ’ …
Tim Dorsey (Gator A-Go-Go (Serge Storms Mystery, #12))
In 2009, Benedict faced a firestorm after he lifted the excommunication of Richard Williamson, a British bishop based in Buenos Aires.61 Bertone, who oversaw Williamson’s vetting, had apparently not even Googled him. If he had, he would have discovered an interview the bishop gave only three days before to Swedish television, in which he said about the Holocaust: “I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers.
Gerald Posner (God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican)
There were not enough guns and, as a result, their fire was too widely dispersed. Gas, so useful in other attacks, not least to deter the enemy gunners, was not employed in this bombardment, except for a small amount from French 75 mm guns. Many British guns were outranged by many German guns. The ammunition was all too often faulty, either failing to go off or sometimes exploding in the barrels of the guns. The weight of shot was not enough to penetrate the deep German dugouts
Robin Neillands (Attrition: The Great War on the Western Front – 1916)
The British, representing a democracy with a free press and conscious of their international image, were susceptible to such shaming. But in Mahatma Gandhi’s own day non-violence could have done nothing for the Jews of Hitler’s Germany, who disappeared into gas chambers far from the flashbulbs of a war-obsessed press. It is ironically to the credit of the British Raj that it faced an opponent like Mahatma Gandhi and allowed him to succeed. The power of non-violence rests in being able to say, ‘to show you that you are wrong, I punish myself’. But that has little effect on those who are not interested in whether they are wrong and are already seeking to punish you whether you disagree with them or not. For them your willingness to undergo punishment is the most convenient means of victory. No wonder Nelson Mandela, who wrote that Gandhi had ‘always’ been ‘a great source of inspiration’, explicitly disavowed non-violence as useless in his struggle against the ruthless apartheid regime.
Shashi Tharoor (Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India)
I like here to think of another Fred, the eminent British scientist Fred Hoyle, and his theory of the universe, in which matter is continuously being created, with the universe expanding but not dissipating. As island galaxies rush away from each other into eternity, new clouds of gas are condensing into new galaxies. As old stars die, new stars are being born. Mr. Melcher lived in this universe of continuous creation and expansion.
Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet: Books 1-5 (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1-5))
NSO works with the Israeli state to further its foreign policy goals, and is used as an alluring carrot to attract potential new friends. Since its inception, NSO has been funded by a range of global players, including London-based equity firm Novalpina Capital. One of the biggest investors in Novalpina, to the tune of US$233 million in 2017, before NSO was on the company’s books, was the Oregon state employees’ pension fund.3 In 2019 pension money for the British gas provider Centrica was also invested in Novalpina.
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)