The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
AS AN avid viewer of Prime Minister’s Questions every Wednesday I was always impressed with David Cameron’s ability to give very detailed replies, including relevant statistics, to the questions put to him. Was the PM aware beforehand what the questions at PMQs were going to be, thus allowing time for research?
Terry Godfrey, Brackley, Northamptonshire IN THEORY the PM does not know the questions in advance. But remember that about half the questions will be from the PM’s own party so it is likely that they will be known and properly prepared for.
It has even been said that some questions are deliberately planted to allow the PM to sound good.
The questioners are selected at random from a ballot so the names of the chosen MPs are known in advance and a good deal of the intense preparation the PM’s researchers do for PMQs is to find out the particular interests of the questioners to predict what they might ask and have a “stunning” answer ready.
I’VE just read that the world record speed for a shuttlecock is more than 260mph and cricket and tennis commentators never tire of telling us how fast the ball was delivered. But how can this be measured? Do they take an average speed over a measured distance?
Roger Manns, by email THE technology used is the same as that of radar speed guns. It involves bouncing a microwave radiation signal off the object being measured then catching its reflection on a receiver and measuring the Doppler shift in the frequency of the radiation. We are used to hearing the effects of the Doppler shift when a train goes past at speed. This is a scientific application of the same thing, using precise measurement of the change in frequency to calculate the speed of the object.
This is not an average speed over a given distance, but the speed at the moment a ball leaves the bowler’s hand or the racket. WHEN I was a pre-school child living in Surrey during the Second World War I noticed that some number 131 buses pulled a small trailer. When I asked my mum about this she told me that because of the shortage of petrol some buses had been converted to run on coal gas and the trailers contained the gas supply. Was she right? Brian Butler, British Columbia,
Canada YOUR mum was quite right about this. More than 1,000 buses around Britain were converted to run on “producer gas” which was made by passing air over hot coal. The result was a combustible mixture of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen which powered the engines.
The bus conductors had the additional task of topping up the coal in the trailers from time to time. The idea was to save petrol but it proved to be inefficient, smelly and dangerous and was given up after a year or two. OUR grandson and his wife have recently adopted a three-yearold little girl called Poppy. Can you tell us if she is legally our greatgranddaughter, and if not why not? Robert Farms, Spennymoor, Co. Durham THE Adoption and Children Act 2002 clearly states: “An adopted person is to be treated in law as if born as the child of the adopters or adopter”.
So I would say you are as much Poppy’s great-grandparents as if she were your grandson’s natural child. But the law has little to say on the rights of grandparents or GPO Rydell Retro Cream Radio, £53. 01603 559250/hurnandhurn. com A stylish model for nostalgia fans which boasts modern trappings such as 20 preset radio stations, an alarm and a fine-quality sound. by great-grandparents. Even the right to have access to grandchildren is not automatic. WHO decided to place one of the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels? Paris or somewhere in Germany would seem more appropriate.
A Chorlton, SE London IT ALL goes back to the founding of the European Economic Community in 1957 and it seems to have been typically shambolic. When no agreement could be reached on where the main offices should be, an emergency meeting of the six founder members (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) was held in Paris which decided to rotate the chairmanship among them all with Belgium going first on alphabetical order.
So everything started with its centre in Brussels. With no agreement ever reached on a permanent capital it never moved. Magpie The Modern Retro Mini FM Radio, £24. 01603 559250/ hurnandhurn.com This quirky, yellow radio is not only a treat for the ears, it is also pleasing on the eyes thanks to its unusual curved design.
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