All the previous entries for the Master's blog since David Kent became Master have been posted using my email address and in consequence have appeared under my name. I hope that they will now appear under David's name and photo

Keith Etherington

The Master has emerged from the depths of his IT problems and here are his blogs for the first two monthis of his year.

10th November Once more a day to remember indeed. Together with one Assistant and one apprentice the early rain showers were braved and we joined the happy throng of livery companies on the roughly theoretical 5 mile trot through the City. Theoretical because by the time we had criss-crossed the roads high-fiving the delighted children in the crowd and distributing a plentiful supply of boiled sweets it was nearer 7. The event became unique when the Lord Mayor was forced to finish the journey in a borrowed Land Rover, a wheel bearing on his coach having seized. Perhaps this tale will go down in history with that of the cat.
 
13th November A Horners Company lecture and supper was appropriately held at the Royal Society of Medicine since the speaker, a surgeon, addressed the subject of polymers applied in modern medicine. Through his remarkable ability to render the topic both informative and comprehensible to a non chemist and non pharmacist the event was indeed memorable and we had the unexpected pleasure of encountering a future Master of the clockmakers, himself a surgeon.
 
14th November This annual address by the Lord Mayor to Masters and Clerks at Mansion House was commendably succinct and incidentally provided an opportunity for me to invite the Lord Mayor to Glorious...

Letter to The Times - January 9^th 2013

Sir, Your leading article (Jan 7) rightly highlights the problem of the kilogrambut it's not the fault of the French. The platinum-iridium alloy kilo held at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sèvres near Paris was actually cast in Hatton Garden, London in 1879 by Johnson-Matthey, as was the metre, the French having tried and failed in 1874.

It is an unsatisfactory reference for all the world's weighing as even with the best methods of cleaning the surface we cannot be sure that it is

really stable, and in a few years it will be replaced by a definition based on a fundamental constant of physics - the Planck constant.

The new definition will bring in modern science and will allow practical rneans for weighing available to every country around the world

without having to send their standards to the International Bureau.

The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in July will feature an exhibit demonstrating measurements of absolute mass linked to the Planck constant with a device made partly of Lego with the help of my 11½ year old grandson.