UK-Divorce Payment Seen Through Different Lenses. Toxic Trump Tweets. Microscope Lamp Lightbulb Trials

Small package in big box

The rumoured Brexit UK payment deal is being interpreted and debated in different forms today. Hardline Tories could actually decide to vote against the Brexit deal as they cannot stomach paying anything, never mind £50bn to the EU as we leave. More moderate Tories want guarantees that the payments are at least linked to the trade talks. 

Remainers are wondering why we are promising to pay out such a large sum when it is actually cheapter to stay within the EU and actually retain all the benefits. 

EU representatives are cagey on what the payment is and also do not see it as being linked to the trade agreement, merely as paving the way to enter into negotiations. The EU also needs to agree that progress has been made on the other two bones of contention, EU citizens rights after Brexit and the Irish border question.

President Trump manages to cause outrage in the UK and elsewhere for retweeting divisive, inaccurate and unverified videos previously posted by a far right, radical anti-Islamic, Britain First leader, Jayda Fransen. Apparently this is directed more at influencing his domestic audience, presumably to garner continued support for his anti-islamic ban and other similar sentiments. Relieved that the Prime Minister has added her voice to condemning this particular set of tweets.

For some reason, could not sleep last night, so spent some time playing around with microscopes in preparation for giving a workshop tomorrow. Ended up trying three different lighting systems for a focussed microscope lamp; fluorescent, LED and halogen. 

The fluorescent light worked best for observations by eye but presented problems when trying photography due to the 50hz flicker causing banding on both the camera's screen view and in the photographs. The halogen bulb was suitably bright but I lacked a diffuser over the bulb. The diffused LED bulb was OK visually and avoided the flicker. however, at lower magnifications, I may have a slight radial brightness gradient from centre to the edge of the image. For low magnifications (up to 100x) the best light source, when using a microscope with a mirror, was a multiple LED map and diffuser to provide a large even illuminated light source. will post on Quekett FB page.

Annoying post of the day was delivery of a small package in a big box. The contents were not that sensitive and could have been wrapped and sent with smaller packaging.