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STEAK NIGHT


TAPAS SPECIALS 3 tapas for £16.50


spiced meatballs mac & cheese


vietnamese sticky pork belly tandoori chicken kebab panko goats cheese


asian smoked duck, salmon or mango tachos crispy feta, filo & honey truffled sweetcorn arancini tomato & red onion bruscHetta roasted red pepper bruscHetta £6 each


our tasty steak selection


All our steaks are locally sourced, weigh 8oz and comes served with fries, onion rings, grilled tomato & mushroom and a choice of sauce - Peppercorn / Blue Cheese & Port / Chimichurri


beef sirloin


rump flat iron


£17 £15 £12


marinated in Chimichurri and served pink LAMB RUMP


£14


Honey and Mint marinated maple cured pork cutlet £10


sides sweet potato fries


hand cut chips french fries onion rings


pizza garlic bread coleslaw


corn on the cob


£3 £3 £3 £3 £3 £3


buttered spring greens £3 mixed salad


£3 £3


01900 829299 | www.frederickscockermouth.co.uk LETTER FROM THE SOUTH...


How often do you look at the night sky? I don’t mean how often do you casually glance up at it on your way home from the pub, or how often do you lift your eyes from the handle of your side-winding trolley as you walk out of the supermarket with your shopping; I mean really look at it, properly, really stare it in the face and appreciate it. Well, you’d better start because it is under threat from a whole new type of light pollution and I fear that unless something is done to stop it, we could lose the sight of a beautiful, dark night sky within a generation.


Light pollution has been a problem for a long time. For many years, astronomers have had their views of the starry sky ruined by bright floodlights casting blazing beams on to the sides of office blocks and the signs on the outsides of pubs. Sports stadiums, hotels and even churches are now all lit up like oil rigs. The distinctive bright orange street lights and motorways have been a problem too but recently, councils have started to replace them with more energy efficient - and less light polluting LEDs. The ground we’ve made up through the use of these, has been lost already, thanks to the availability of cheap home security floodlights in discount shops and online, lights which are so bright they could light up the inside of Old Trafford if their own floodlights failed.


Now we - and by that I mean everyone who appreciates nature and the beauty of the natural


INFO@THECOCKERMOUTHPOST.CO.UK


world, not just stargazers - have a new enemy in the war on light pollution.


Recently, a small, private New Zealand-based company launched a rocket into space and deployed several small satellites, including ‘The Humanity Star’, a 1m across ball covered in highly-reflective triangles of material. The purpose of this ‘space disco ball’ is, they say, to get people looking up at the night sky, to inspire them, to make them contemplate their place in the universe. Rubbish! It's an attempt to use the night sky as an advertising billboard. It’s the company saying: “Look what WE did!” And I fear it might have set a very dangerous precedent, which might, ultimately, cost all of us the night sky.


Why? Because this might lead to others casting a beady eye at the sky and wondering how they can use the night sky to promote their own, or their clients' products too. And that could be disastrous. The night sky is already full of wonderful sights - glittering star clusters, misty nebulae, gracefully-curled galaxies, which can inspire people around the world if they are shown them. I don't believe people will find a faint star, blinking as it drifts across that sky, anywhere near as inspiring as anything that's already up there.


As for all the flowery talk about HS ‘inspiring’ people, don’t fall for all that new age, harp-


plucking, fairy-folk, Kum-by-a gumpf. HS is going to be too faint to catch many people’s attention; it is up there purely to attract attention ‘to the company’. And when their first artificial star falls back to Earth at the year’s end, Rocket Lab might do it again, their own website says so. And would the next one be smaller? Fainter? Don’t be daft. It would have to be bigger and brighter or there’d be no point in doing it, would there?


A big deal about nothing? I don’t think so! Already, the air in some of the world’s cities is so polluted that when you breathe in there you’re breathing poison. The oceans are so full of plastic that there are huge artificial islands of it now and when you eat fish you’re taking in god knows how many tiny microbeads of it.


It’s got to stop! If it doesn’t, one day our grandchildren, maybe even our grown-up children, will look up at a night sky so light polluted they won’t see stars, only the Moon and maybe Venus and Jupiter shining through the orange haze like dim candle flames and as one artwork or ‘inspirational star’ after another slides across the sky like a slow motion shooting star, most people will have no idea what a clear, dark sky looked like.


Isn’t that a sickening thought? Stuart Atkinson


Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com


ISSUE 423 | 22 FEBRUARY 2018 | 20


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