Cheap, Clean-Burning, Industrial Decline

The big news today in the world of global infrastructure is that the UK's National Grid has agreed to buy Keyspan Energy (link to pdf), headquartered in little old Brooklyn. This is one of those ranking exercises that should make Americans very nervous. The UK has a miserable savings rate, virtually no manufacturing base to speak of, but it can still afford some decent chunks of the US' plumbing.

Forget about the ports, it's the other 99% of the US that's up for sale that the rest of the world's interested in. Less a series of flashy real estate deals of the kind that made Nakatomi Corporation fat than a series of monopoly services that throw off cash year after year.

And so the former Brooklyn Union Gas Company falls into the greasy clutches of the limeys, and I see nish change in my gas bill. This would almost be a time to post Freq Nasty's "Brooklyn To Brixton", a tune whose title describes in reverse the Gringcorp life journey. But National Grid is based on the Strand and the tune's bobbins.

Instead, I shall post something by half of Orbital pretending to be handbag. From 1993, but it appeared on the first techno tape I ever listened to in 1995. If you thought that I almost spent the whole weekend without leaving the house, you'd be right. That tape, and several others, now live IN THE DIGITAL ETHER.

Golden Girls "Kinetic (Orbital Mix)
Queue up to buy "Vintage R&S V.2" here. The tape sometimes crops up on eBay.