This week, I’ve chosen a great Comment is Free article by Victoria Coren, outlining her experience of giving up smoking. I think it’s instructive both for Public Health people like me, and probably to some degree for smokers.

The great draw-quote for me was this: “People would point out the health risks (as though they might not have occurred to me, despite most of my family dying from cancer), without understanding that the health risks didn’t matter because I cared more about smoking than I did about living.”

It’s well worth a read!

This is one of the footpaths on the High Level Bridge linking Newcastle and Gateshead. The top deck of the High Level Bridge carries trains, whilst pedestrians and road traffic cross on the lower deck. It was opened by Queen Victoria herself, and if you’re wondering about the dates and designers, this plaque might help:

The bridge was the world’s first major wrought iron tied-arch design, and spans 1,337 feet across six spans. During the Great Fire of Newcastle and Gateshead in 1854, it’s said that the bridge “vibrated like a thin wire”.

One has to wonder whether these not-so-good vibrations caused the first flaws in the ironwork that developed to severe cracks found when the bridge was due for restoration in 2005. These led to the bridge being closed for three years, and road traffic now being restricted to only taxis and buses in a single direction.

In the first year after it re-opened, though, some 32,000 drivers – my dad and brother included – ignored these restrictions. Perhaps, like dad and Glenn, all of them got lost and confused, ended up at the entrance to the bridge before they knew it, and were unable to turn round!

In response, Northumbria Police launched a crackdown, and fined over 1,000 drivers £30 in a few short weeks. Electronic registration number capturing monitoring equipment now automatically issues fines to anyone who breaks the rules.

I promised a second photo today, and here it is: Newcastle’s old Post Office. It’s just opposite St Nick’s Cathedral, though was built rather more recently, in the 1870s, to James Williams’s design. Williams also designed twenty or so other Post Offices, from London to Carlisle.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this building is that it marks the centre of Newcastle. Whenever road signs give a distance to Newcastle, it is the distance to this very building, and all signs to the “city centre” point in this direction. Tourists are sometimes confused about the Metro’s decision to label the nearby station “Central”, rather than reserving that title for “Monument” which is rather closer to the retail centre of the city: now you know why.

These days, the building is used by a subsidiary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Newcastle’s main customer-facing Post Office is in the corner of the first floor of WHSmith. I wonder what Williams would make of that?!

As I’ve logged on to post this, I’ve just realised that I didn’t post a picture yesterday! I’ll have to do another later to make up for my forgetfulness!

This is the Lime Street Chimney here in Newcastle. It was part of a flax mill built by John Dobson in 1840, now converted to The Cluny, one of Newcastle’s most famous bars. Everyone who’s anyone on the music scene has performed there, from the Arctic Monkeys to Danni Minogue, from Mumford & Sons to Kate Nash.

The chimney has been out of use since about 1900, and was once converted to a blacksmith’s workshop. At some point around the 1930s, the chimney was reduced in height and filled in. I hope the blacksmith had left by then, or he’d have had an awful shock when he turned up to work!

Given that we’re in the middle of the annual GCSE and A-Level results period, and especially given the recent debates on reform of the exam system, I thought this was a particularly apt choice for this week’s book review.

Jerry Jarvis was formerly the managing director of the Edexcel exam board, until he very publicly quit in 2009 over concerns about the grade calibration of A-Levels in particular. In this book, he explains in some detail his reasons for leaving, muses on the state of the system as is, and gives suggestions to pupils and parents considering their educational choices.

It was actually quite a good book. It was certainly less dry than the subject matter might suggest, though it was rather short: it read more like an extended briefing paper than a short book.

There was nothing that struck me as especially ground-breaking in here, but as someone who sat their A-Levels within the last decade, perhaps that’s unsurprising. I think it would be revealing to those who are less well versed in England’s examination system.

Jarvis gives a spirited defence of the exam system, and explains why grade inflation doesn’t indicate declining standards: in fact, he makes the point that we should really expected greater grade inflation than we actually have, which perhaps hides the fact that standards in schools are not improving at the rate one might expect from the level of investment. He bemoans schools’ lack of action over poorly performing teachers, and their lack of engagement with the detailed feedback data that is provided. This was a little eye-opening: I hadn’t realised that teachers had access to such detailed breakdown on their pupils’ performance, so as to enable them to target specific areas of their teaching practice for improvement.

There were a couple of decently amusing anecdotes, like the time he was tasked with estimating how much each individual pupil’s performance had been affected by the escape of a pet frog during an exam sitting, and these did add a little levity to the book.

I suspect that student and parents of students actively sitting GCSEs or A-Levels, or making choices about what to study, would have a much more active interest in this book than I. But, having said that, as a general reader I found it really quite interesting, and given it’s brevity, most people will probably find it a worthwhile read.

Cheats, Choices and Dumbing Down is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

This is a really bad photo of perhaps Durham’s most famous statue: that of the Marquess of Londonderry, Charles William Vane Tempest Stewart. He was an Irishman, born in 1778 in Dublin. He became a politician, soldier, and owner and developer of a lot of land.

If you’ve an astounding memory, you’ll recall that I’ve mentioned this family before: they owned both Wynyard Hall in County Durham and Mount Stewart over in Northern Ireland.

But here’s another connection between County Durham and County Down: Charles William Vane Tempest Stewart’s other memorial is Scrabo Tower. Wendy often says we should go for a walk near Scrabo Tower when we’re visiting her family, but she’s never taken me yet!

When we were first going out, Wendy once spent most of day in here painting a plate for me. She apparently had quite a crowd watching by the end of the day! She returned a year later to paint a plate of herself, and both now sit together on the bookshelf in our study (the plates, that is… we sit on chairs!)

This is the lighthouse at Donaghadee. It’s 16m tall, was first lit in 1836, and is very picturesque on a sunny day like today!

I think Newcastle Airport is brilliant – I’ve always found the staff very friendly, and on a good day I can go door to departures in about 3 minutes.

Today, though, wasn’t a good day: a very early start and hoards of holidaymakers conspired to leave me less than delighted. It’s still my favourite airport, though!

This is a great feature from Popular Science magazine about Taylor Wilson, a young lad with an amazingly enquiring scientific mind. He set up a nuclear lab in his family’s garage before he even reached his teens, and achieved nuclear fusion at the age of fourteen. It’s an extraordinary story by Tom Clynes.