LONDON EYE, YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL WITH HIGHTS

Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have visited London Eye, a cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames and the most popular paid tourist attraction in England.

Before, they have studied some English grammar with Should/Shouldn't and Have Got.

More info: Should-Shouldn't I , II & III

More information: Have got/Haven't got

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Download Who is Who (Star Wars Version) 

The London Eye or the Millennium Wheel, is a cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames in London.

It is Europe's tallest cantilevered observation wheel, and is the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3.75 million visitors annually, and has made many appearances in popular culture.

The structure is 135 metres tall and the wheel has a diameter of 120 metres.

When it opened to the public in 2000 it was the world's tallest Ferris wheel. Its height was surpassed by the 160-metre Star of Nanchang in 2006, the 165-metre Singapore Flyer in 2008, and the 167-metre-tall High Roller (Las Vegas) in 2014. Supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the taller Nanchang and Singapore wheels, the Eye is described by its operators as the world's tallest cantilevered observation wheel.

The London Eye used to offer the highest public viewing point in London until it was superseded by the 245-metre-high observation deck on the 72nd floor of The Shard, which opened to the public on 1 February 2013.

The London Eye adjoins the western end of Jubilee Gardens, previously the site of the former Dome of Discovery, on the South Bank of the River Thames between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge beside County Hall, in the London Borough of Lambeth.

The London Eye was designed by the husband-and-wife team of Julia Barfield and David Marks of Marks Barfield Architects. Mace was responsible for construction management, with Hollandia as the main steelwork contractor and Tilbury Douglas as the civil contractor. Consulting engineers Tony Gee & Partners designed the foundation works while Beckett Rankine designed the marine works.

The rim of the Eye is supported by tensioned steel cables and resembles a huge spoked bicycle wheel. The lighting was re-done with LED lighting from Color Kinetics in December 2006 to allow digital control of the lights as opposed to the manual replacement of gels over fluorescent tubes.

The wheel was constructed in sections which were floated up the Thames on barges and assembled lying flat on piled platforms in the river. Once the wheel was complete it was lifted into an upright position by a strand jack system made by Enerpac. It was first raised at 2 degrees per hour until it reached 65 degrees, then left in that position for a week while engineers prepared for the second phase of the lift.

More information: The London Eye

The project was European with major components coming from six countries: the steel was supplied from the UK and fabricated in The Netherlands by the Dutch company Hollandia, the cables came from Italy, the bearings came from Germany (FAG/Schaeffler Group), the spindle and hub were cast in the Czech Republic, the capsules were made by Poma in France and the glass for these came from Italy, and the electrical components from the UK.

The London Eye was formally opened by the Prime Minister Tony Blair on 31 December 1999, but did not open to the paying public until 9 March 2000 because of a capsule clutch problem.

The nearest London Underground station is Waterloo, although Charing Cross, Embankment, and Westminster are also within easy walking distance.

Connection with National Rail services is made at London Waterloo station and London Waterloo East station.

London River Services operated by Thames Clippers and City Cruises stop at the London Eye Pier.

More information: Visit London

 

When I was a youngster my grandparents
took me sightseeing and we went on the London Eye.

Stuart Broad

WINSORS! ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED

Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have visited Liverpool, seat of Liverpool FC and Everton FC, and birthplace of The Beatles. They have spent Saint Valentine's Day talking about trobadours and trobairitzes, and enjoying the city. 

 

During the trip to Liverpool, the family has studied some English grammar with Should/Shouldn't, and they have talked about how to protect Núria Winsor from a great admirer named James Bond, 007.

More info: Should-Shouldn't I , II & III

 

More information: Troubadours & Trobairitzes, Occitan Lyric Poetry 

 

More information: Iain MacMillan's Icon, The Beatles' Abbey Road

 

Liverpool is a cathedral and port city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, 286 km northwest of London.

 

Liverpool is the fifth largest city in the United Kingdom and the administrative headquarters of the Liverpool City Region, a combined authority area with a population of over 1.5 million.

 

Established as a borough in Lancashire in 1207, Liverpool became significant in the late 17th century when the Port of Liverpool was heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The port also imported cotton for the Lancashire textile mills, and became a major departure point for English and Irish emigrants to North America. 

 

Liverpool rose to global economic importance at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and was home to the first intercity railway, the first non-combustible warehouse system (the Royal Albert Dock), and a pioneering elevated electrical railway; it was granted city status in 1880 and was moved from Lancashire to the newly created county of Merseyside in 1974.

The economy of Liverpool is diversified and encompasses tourism, culture, maritime, hospitality, healthcare, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, creative, and digital sectors. The city is home to the UK's second highest number of art galleries, national museums, listed buildings, and parks and open spaces, with only London having more.

The name comes from the Old English lifer, meaning thick or muddy water, and pōl, meaning a pool or creek, and is first recorded around 1190 as Liuerpul. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, The original reference was to a pool or tidal creek now filled up into which two streams drained. The place appearing as Leyrpole, in a legal record of 1418, may also refer to Liverpool. Other origins of the name have been suggested, including elverpool, a reference to the large number of eels in the Mersey. The adjective Liverpudlian was first recorded in 1833.

Although the Old English origin of the name Liverpool is beyond dispute, claims are sometimes made that the name Liverpool is of Welsh origin, but these are without foundation. The Welsh name for Liverpool is Lerpwl, from a former English local form Leerpool. This is a reduction of the form Leverpool with the loss of the intervocalic [v].

 

In the 19th century, some Welsh publications used the name Lle'r Pwll ((the) place (of) the pool), a reinterpretation of Lerpwl, probably in the belief that Lle'r Pwll was the original form.

More information: Liverpool History Society

All You Need Is Love is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a non-album single in July 1967.

It was written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The song was Britain's contribution to Our World, the first live global television link, for which the band were filmed performing it at EMI Studios in London on 25 June.

The programme was broadcast via satellite and seen by an audience of over 400 million in 25 countries. Lennon's lyrics were deliberately simplistic, to allow for the show's international audience, and captured the utopian ideals associated with the Summer of Love. The single topped sales charts in Britain, the United States and many other countries, and became an anthem for the counterculture's embrace of flower power philosophy.

Our World coincided with the height of the Beatles' popularity and influence, following the release of their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rather than perform the song entirely live, the group played to a pre-recorded backing track. With an orchestral arrangement by George Martin, the song begins with a portion of the French national anthem and ends with musical quotations from works such as Glenn Miller's In the Mood, Greensleeves, Bach's Invention No. 8 in F major, and the Beatles' 1963 hit She Loves You. Adding to the broadcast's festive atmosphere, the studio was adorned with signs and streamers and filled with guests dressed in psychedelic attire, including members of the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Small Faces. Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, described the performance as the band's finest moment.

All You Need Is Love was later included on the US Magical Mystery Tour album and served as the moral for the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. Originally broadcast in black-and-white, the Our World performance was colourised for inclusion in the Beatles' 1995 Anthology documentary series.

While the song remains synonymous with the 1967 Summer of Love ethos and provided the foundation for Lennon's legacy as a humanitarian, numerous critics found the message naive in retrospect, particularly during the 1980s.

Since 2009, Global Beatles Day, an international celebration of the Beatles' music and social message, takes place on 25 June each year in tribute to their Our World performance.

In the decades following the record's release, Beatles biographers and music journalists criticised the lyrics as naive and simplistic and detected a smugness in the message; the song's musical content was similarly dismissed as unimaginative.

More information: The History Press

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

There's nothing you can do that can't be done (love)
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung (love)
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game (love)

It's easy

Nothing you can make that can't be made (love)
No one you can save that can't be saved (love)
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time (love)

It's easy

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love

Love is all you need

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

Love is all you need

Nothing you can know that isn't known (love)
Nothing you can see that isn't shown (love)
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be, it's easy

The Beatles

YANKEES VS. METS, ENJOYING BASEBALL IN NEW YORK

Today, The Grangers & The Grandma have visited the Yankees and the Mets stadiums. They like baseball a lot and they have spent a great day. Before this visit, they have been studying some Engl¡sh grammar. They have revised Should/Shouldn't.

 

Finally, they have continuing reading Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost.

More information: Should/Shouldn't

The Yankees and Mets are the two major league clubs based in New York City.

The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. 

The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division.

They are one of two major league clubs based in New York City, the other being the National League's (NL) New York Mets. 

The Yankees began play in the 1901 season as the Baltimore Orioles (no relation to the modern Baltimore Orioles).

In 1903, Frank Farrell and Bill Devery purchased the franchise after it ceased operations and moved it to New York City, renaming the club the New York Highlanders. The Highlanders were officially renamed the New York Yankees in 1913.

The team is owned by Yankee Global Enterprises, an LLC that is controlled by the family of the late George Steinbrenner, who purchased the team in 1973. Brian Cashman is the team's general manager, and Aaron Boone is the team's field manager. The team's home games were played at the original Yankee Stadium from 1923 to 1973 and from 1976 to 2008.

In 1974 and 1975, the Yankees shared Shea Stadium with the Mets, in addition to the New York Jets and the New York Giants.

In 2009, they moved into a new ballpark of the same name that was constructed adjacent to the previous facility, which was closed and demolished. The team is perennially among the leaders in MLB attendance.

Arguably the most successful professional sports team in the United States, the Yankees have won 19 American League East Division titles, 40 American League pennants, and 27 World Series championships, all of which are MLB records.

The team has won more titles than any other franchise in the four major North American sports leagues, after briefly trailing the NHL's Montreal Canadiens by one or two titles in the 1990s.

The Yankees have had 44 players and 11 managers inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter, with Rivera and Jeter having the two highest vote percentages of all Hall of Fame members.

According to Forbes, the Yankees are the second-highest valued sports franchise in the United States and the second in the world, with an estimated value of approximately $5 billion. The team has garnered enormous popularity and a dedicated fanbase, as well as widespread enmity from fans of other MLB teams. The team's rivalry with the Boston Red Sox is one of the most well-known rivalries in North American sports.

From 1903 to 2021, the Yankees' overall win-loss record is 10,503-7.

More information: New York Yankees

The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Queens. 

The Mets compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division.

They are one of two major league clubs based in New York City, the other being the American League's (AL) New York Yankees.

One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed NL teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. The team's colors evoke the blue of the Dodgers and the orange of the Giants.

For the 1962 and 1963 seasons, the Mets played home games at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan before moving to Queens. From 1964 to 2008, the Mets played their home games at Shea Stadium, named after William Shea, the founder of the Continental League, a proposed third major league, the announcement of which prompted their admission as an NL expansion team.

Since 2009, the Mets have played their home games at Citi Field next to the site where Shea Stadium once stood.

In their inaugural season, the Mets posted a record of 40-120, the worst regular-season record since MLB went to a 162-game schedule. The team never finished better than second-to-last in the 1960s until the Miracle Mets beat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series, considered one of the biggest upsets in World Series history despite the Mets having won 100 games that season.

The Mets have qualified for the postseason nine times, winning the World Series twice (1969 and 1986) and winning five National League pennants (most recently in 2000 and 2015).

Since 2020, the Mets have been owned by billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen who purchased the team for $2.4 billion.

As of the end of the 2021 season, the team's overall win-loss record is 4,551-4,927.

More information: New York Mets

Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.

Yogi Berra

BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP MATRIX & THE PRODUCT

Today, The Grandma has continued her English classes with The Bishops in Castelldefels.

First, they have practised must and should modal verbs.

Next, they have created a BCG matrix.

More information: Should/Shouldn't

More information: Must/Mustn't

The growth-share matrix (aka the product portfolio matrix, Boston Box, BCG-matrix, Boston matrix, Boston Consulting Group analysis, portfolio diagram) is a chart created in a collaborative effort by BCG employees: Alan Zakon first sketched it and then, together with his colleagues, refined it.

BCG's founder Bruce D. Henderson popularized the concept in an essay titled The Product Portfolio in BCG's publication Perspectives in 1970. The purpose of the matrix is to help corporations to analyze their business units, that is, their product lines. This helps the company allocate resources and is used as an analytical tool in brand marketing, product management, strategic management, and portfolio analysis.

To use the chart, analysts plot a scatter graph to rank the business units (or products) on the basis of their relative market shares and growth rates.

-Cash cows is where a company has high market share in a slow-growing industry. These units typically generate cash in excess of the amount of cash needed to maintain the business.

-Dogs, more charitably called pets, are units with low market share in a mature, slow-growing industry. These units typically "break even", generating barely enough cash to maintain the business's market share.

-Question marks (also known as a problem child or Wild dogs) are businesses operating with a low market share in a high-growth market. They are a starting point for most businesses. Question marks have a potential to gain market share and become stars, and eventually cash cows when market growth slows.

-Stars are units with a high market share in a fast-growing industry. They are graduated question marks with a market- or niche-leading trajectory. The hope is that stars become next cash cows.

As a particular industry matures and its growth slows, all business units become either cash cows or dogs. The natural cycle for most business units is that they start as question marks, then turn into stars. Eventually, the market stops growing; thus, the business unit becomes a cash cow. At the end of the cycle, the cash cow turns into a dog.

As BCG stated in 1970, only a diversified company with a balanced portfolio can use its strengths to truly capitalize on its growth opportunities. 

The balanced portfolio has:

-Stars whose high share and high growth assure the future;

-Cash cows that supply funds for that future growth; and

-Question marks to be converted into stars with the added funds.

More information: BCG

The financial markets generally are unpredictable.
So that one has to have different scenarios...
The idea that you can actually predict
what's going to happen contradicts
my way of looking at the market.

George Soros