Graphene: it’s the future, you know

LIFE AND OTHER BITS: TWO guys from Manchester University, Andrew Geim and Novoselov Konstantin (good Manchester names) have discovered graphene, a substance so thin it has only two practical dimensions, as well as being transparent and 200 times stronger than steel.

Graphene will, scientists tell us, change the world, but I expect they’ll have to find it first.

They say it will revolutionise aircraft but presumably that doesn’t mean they’ll make planes out of graphene; after all who’s going to board a plane you can’t see, no matter how reliable and safe they tell you it is? All those plastic seats just hanging in the air over the runway! Spooky.

Graphene is, you’ll be pleased to know, a distant relation of graphite, the black stuff in pencils that always breaks just when you start to write down something important. Hopefully it is HB2’s much, much stronger cousin.

Professor Geim, the leader of the team, has another bold claim to fame. He once won a prize — albeit a spoof prize — for devising a method of gravitating a frog that, somehow, does not seem to have caught on. Maybe the frog didn’t survive its trip into space. We should be told.

Anyway, graphene is a carbon and it is not only the lead in pencils that are fashioned from carbon. We — you, me, your cat, dog and even your frog — are largely made up of carbon and that doesn’t actually amount to a huge endorsement for its properties. Will it get fat? Sulk when it can’t get its own way? Or even worse, turn violent? As we can’t even see the little blighter, how will we know?


IT would have made a good 11-plus question (for those old enough to remember such things). If mum-of-two Mrs Grafter at number two earns £44,000 a year and loses her child benefits because of it how can parents of twins Mr and Mrs Aren’t We Lucky next door who earn between them £80,000 keep all their benefits?
Answer: because those who thought up the plan should go back to counting beads and leave economics to those who know what they are doing (and none of them are in Government).

Every Government has its barmy moments (the last one didn’t have any other kind) but how can, presumably well education politicians and civil service mandarins from the Treasury to whom, to a certain extent we trust our futures, be so thick? It is obvious that the moneybags Cameron and Osborne might have their pockets full of gold but their heads are empty of real-world experience and simple common sense.

Heaven help us all.


FINAL WORD: To those already brassed off at the price of fuel, a consoling thought for now: a litre of diesel in north-west Scotland last week varied in price from £1.32 to £1.38. Better stay at home.