If you don’t like the job...

Train drivers have been offered £65,000 a year just to drive a train. But do we really need train drivers any more?

Perhaps the UK should invest in developing driverless trains. These have been running successfully in Singapore for years.

But I don’t suppose the unions would like it. They might have to call a strike.

To all the striking junior doctors, train drivers and others, I recommend Karl

Marx’s slogan: ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.’

Or a more modern view: if you don’t like the pay, perks, and conditions, find another job. u3a Todmorden Members Meeting in February was Stephen Westland, with: Does Colour Exist?

He began by answering the question posed in the title: Yes, colour does exist, but not in the way we think it does.

Light travels into the eye, and to the retina, which is covered with millions of light sensitive cells known as rods and cones. When these cells detect light, they send signals to the brain.

Most people have three types of cones; long wavelength sensitive, medium wavelength sensitive and short wavelength sensitive.

The signals from the brain which enable us to identify what we are looking at, and what colour we think it is, are only recognised because we have seen these things before, or we can guess at what they might be, based on what we have already seen during our lifetime. Stephen used a well known quotation which summed this up: ‘I think, therefore I am.’

People with only two, or one, of these cones see less colours or are ‘colour blind’.

Using short film clips, Stephen demonstrated how we can easily mistake one colour for another, or think we have seen a certain colour when they have been shown together, moved about, or contrasted with other colours. His audience of our members had different ideas of what they had actually seen on the clips.

But do we really need train drivers any more?

Stephen said that what is true about colour, is also true about sound, and demonstrated this.