Utility Week

Community with the magnets. It's the same logic as clipping pegs to your ears – I clipped them to my earlobes and then clipped them to my nostril and things went downhill pretty quickly when I clipped the magnets to my other nostril." When he took the magnets off the outside of his nose, the two inside stuck together. Unfor- tunately, the researcher then attempted to use his remaining magnets to remove them. "A•er struggling for 20 minutes, I decided to Google the problem… the solution sug- gested was more magnets to put on the outside to offset the pull from the ones inside. "As I was pulling downwards Disconnector Publishing director, Utilities: Ellen Bennett, t: 01342 332084, e: ellenbennett@fav-house.com; Content director: Jane Gray, janegray@fav-house.com, t: 01342 333004; Editor: Suzanne Heneghan, t: 01342 332106, e: suzanneheneghan@fav-house.com Digital editor: James Wallin, 01342 332015, jameswallin@fav-house.com; Intelligence editor: Denise Chevin, 01342 332087, denisechevin@fav-house.com Energy correspondent: Tom Grimwood, t: 01342 332061, e: tomgrimwood@fav-house.com; Policy correspondent: David Blackman, e: davidblackman@ fav-house.com; Reporter: Adam John, t: 01342 332069, e: adamjohn@fav-house.com; Water correspondent: Ruth Williams, e: ruthwilliams@fav-house.com, t: 01342 332069 Production editor: Paul Newton, t: 01342 332085, e: paulnewton@fav-house.com; Business development manager: Ben Hammond, e: benhammond@fav-house.com. t: 01342 332116; Business development executive: Sarah Wood, e: sarahwood@fav-house.com. t: 01342 332117 Conference sponsorship manager: Sophie Abbott, t: 01342 332062, e: sophieabbott@fav-house.com; General enquiries: 01342 332000; Membership enquiries: Peter Bissell, t: 01342 332057, e: peterbissell@fav-house.com. 2,500 Average circulation Jan–Dec 2018 Membership subscriptions: UK £950+VAT per year. Contact Jo Nikiforov on: 01342 332077 Utility Week is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the regulator of the UK's magazine and newspaper industry. We abide by the Editors' Code of Practice and are committed to upholding the highest standards of journalism. If you think we have not met those standards and want to make a complaint, please contact the Editor. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, or if you want more information about IPSO or the Editors' Code, contact IPSO on 0300 123 2220 or visit www.ipso.co.uk. It's a similar story for all manner of particulate pollution, which mainly results from petrol and diesel engines. The figures aren't in yet for CO2, but with many aircra• grounded we can expect a similar boost to net-zero ambitions. Call Disconnector a cynic, but a•er the last comparable economic event – the temporary seizure of the world economy a•er the 2008 crash – politicians were quick to forget the part it played when they were later basking in favourable emissions reduction figures. What's the bet that 18 months from now, politicians will similarly be marvelling at their cleverness in reducing emissions, while forgetting to mention that the chief reason was because everyone was holed up indoors? Idle hands… A big shout-out to Dr Daniel Reardon, an astrophysicist living in Australia, for trying to occupy his time in self-isolation use- fully by inventing a device that reminds people to stop touching their face. Alas, the contraption that he came up with – which combined a necklace and an arrangement of magnets – didn't work. Further alas, he then became bored and started clipping the magnets to parts of his face. Dr Reardon takes up the tale: "I was still a bit bored, playing Life inside And so ends week two of the lockdown, and with it surely the longest March on record. Your mind plays tricks with you during enforced idleness; if feels like we're moving into a new epoch, but this one's known as "April". When future generations look back at this time, how will it be referred to, wonders Disconnector? For all the fear, misinformation and hysteria swirling around our heads, it will probably find a more prosaic label: the Great Time of Sitting Around in Your Pyjamas perhaps. However, given that so many of us have got so much time on our hands, here's something to think about: while placing all of humanity under effective house arrest has done little for our mental health, it has done wonders for the planet. Wildlife is booming in the absence of humans chas- ing a•er it, either with rifles or cameras, and the quality of air – particularly in large European cities – has rarely been better. The latest stats from the European Environment Agency are really quite startling, with levels of nitrogen dioxide, for example, down 60 per cent in Barcelona compared with the same period last year. UTILITY WEEK | 3RD - 9TH APRIL 2020 | 31 to try and remove the magnets, they clipped on to each other and I lost my grip. And those two magnets ended up in my le• nostril while the other one was in my right. "At this point I ran out of magnets." He tried removing them with pliers, but the only pair he had were themselves magnetised, so all he did was repeatedly slap himself in the face with the pliers. At this point, his partner took him to hospital to have them removed. The moral of the tale? No matter how bored you are, sticking magnets up your nose is almost certainly as bad an idea as it sounds. That gets my goat… In the absence of people, mountain goats have decided to take back control of the town of Llandudno in Wales. Throughout Europe there have been reports of wildlife usually restricted to moun- tains or forests appearing in the middle of town squares, including widely circulated videos on social media of wild boars in Spain. The breakout media star was a rare Malabar civet pho- tographed in India (below). It was last seen in the 1980s and unfortunately still hasn't been spotted: the photo is of a common or garden civet.

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