The Night Mail

[AndyID]

Another arduous day on the slopes. Not a cloud in the sky all day.

 

 

If you look closely you can even see someone skiing 😄

 

This time at my local hill - Lookout Pass on the Idaho/Montana line.

 

Off for a couple of days at Grand Targhee next week. It's in Wyoming but very close to the opposite corner of Idaho from here. The  views of the Teton mountain range are fantastic from the ski area. Hopefully the Sun will allow some photo opportunities.

[iL Dottore]

7 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

No error, the inference they would be in the drugs squad!

Whooosh…. The sound of a joke passing HH by…..😥

[AndyID]

8 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

I think that many are so concentrated on getting further up the greasy pole that fear of being held back by opposition from, for want of a better term but you know what I mean, the woke brigade means that satisfying the aim of the service gets forgotten. What then happens is that those whom they in turn drag up the greasy pole behind them are of the same ilk and so it goes on.

 

Dave

 

Hi Dave,

 

You might not be aware but the term "woke" (whatever it actually means)  has been commandeered by certain a political organization in the USA to brand anyone who might even be quite conservative (with a small "c") but doesn't subscribe to their extremist right-wing dogma.

 

(I think it's basically just a way of condemning anyone and everyone who might have slightly more "liberal" convictions.)

 

It's just another example of the "name-calling" and destructive polarization that is destroying any sort of meaningful political dialog in the USA. I hope it is not having a similar effect in the UK.

 

Andy

[AndyID]

45 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Whooosh…. The sound of a joke passing HH by…..😥

 

You are definitely pushing it laddie 😄

[AndyID]

Interesting comments about education. Beats me what the real answer is. My sense is it can only go so far and then it's really up to the individual to make the best of it.

 

I'm probably an interesting example and an exception to many of the rules. Academically I was a serious disaster. To a some extent I think that was because any sort of exam terrified me, particularly if it was a case of learning about something just to pass the exam rather than learning about something I actually found interesting.

 

Ultimately I went to another UK university but as a technician rather than a student. There were no exams. I learned an enormous amount from the staff and I excelled.  When I retired I was Senior Vice President of Engineering at a serious hi-tech company in California.

[Flying Fox 34F]

I have all the respect for those that teach.  

 

However, the Political brigade saw opportunities to get rid of certain embarrassing situations over the years.

Higher education was actively encouraged.  This brought more funding to Universities and caused many Polytechnics in England, to change to Universities, as well.  The advantage politically was it reduced the Unemployment figures and portrayed a generation of very well qualified students.

 

Then funding came into the spotlight, hence Tuition Fees and Student debt.  This was part of the Debt is good culture fostered by cheap credit.  Spend you time studying and rack up a huge debt, which you supposedly pay back as you earn.  The problem is there isn’t enough positions in different sectors to employ all of these Graduates.  Which means many end up in jobs, that pay less, so they do not have to repay the loans, so quickly.   Therefore, the Degree concept is spread wider and wider to the likes of Nursing, Policing, etc.  But, Government does not want to pay the reasonable amounts in return, so many will not earn enough to pay back the loans.  
 

The lucky ones either get the high paid career or were savvy enough to fund themselves through their studies.  Of course, there are those who had scholarships and others whose families paid, but the vast majority end up debt and now trapped by the Credit Crunch.

 

As for me, never went to Uni.  Started work at 17 as an Apprentice Engineering Draughtsman, became an Electricical Cable Surveyor, then dumped it all for a better paid career on the Rail Network.  The Covid event changed my views on things and my wife lost her job due to a bullying manager, (who eventually lost his!!!!).  We now live in Romania in the Carpathian Mountains renovating a house with the intention of having paying visitors.  Most important thing though, we own everything outright.  
 

Apologies for the long message, I just had to say it.

 

Paul

 

[Happy Hippo]

Education is seriously lacking, especially when it comes learning how to research properly as Brian and Dave have both pointed out.  Laziness is key.

 

A flick through the daily rags this morning reveals the Daily Express running a story about a 9 foot long Black Mamba in Africa that is allegedly eating kittens.

 

Now the Black Mamba is a very distinctive snake with a coffin shaped head, (Appropriate with the mortality rate from Mamba bites.) yet the lead photograph is that of a King Cobra.  Now some might say 'it's only a snake', but can you imagine the apoplexy if an article on Midland Compound locomotives was headed up by a picture of  'City of Truro'?

 

The paper  would be awash with comments from the likes of 'Mildly upset from Market Drayton' or 'Revolted in Reading'. 

 

And I'm betting the perpetrator of this horror article has a degree in Meeja Studees😂

 

Edited March 23, 2023 by Happy Hippo

[DenysW]

3 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

article on Midland Compound locomotives was headed up by a picture of  'City of Truro'?

I wasn't aware that either of these ate kittens? Is this Trumpian news, or am I just confused?

[Happy Hippo]

2 minutes ago, DenysW said:

I wasn't aware that either of these ate kittens? Is this Trumpian news, or am I just confused?

No I'm just a bad journalist😂

[Happy Hippo]

Does a bad journalist make the axle boxes that run hot?

 

Back onto animals that kill, one side of our family are from the farming community so I am well aware of the dangers that some animals can pose to people. Yet the only person (in the family) killed by an animal, was my grandfather's brother, Edwin.

 

He was killed at the age of four...

 

By a cat!

 

He was playing with a kitten who scrammed him with it's claws:  Edwin developed blood poisoning and succumbed.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Happy Hippo

[SM42]

I sort of fell into further education in the "what else to do" style. 

I studied economics, drank beer, learned to  cook and look after myself ( by necessity) and made friends, all by trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. 

 

Ultimately I left into a recession  I didn't see coming and spent a while signing on till I secured a job for which a degree was not a prerequisite. 

I'm still there 30 years later. 

 

I was in one of the last few intakes of students before it became a way of keeping people off the unemployment figures for a couple of years. 

 

There are that many studying now  that I feel  it has devalued the degree. 

Where an o level used to be an essential possession  for a job hunter,  now it's a degree.

 

We've had our share of the hopeless but generally the grads that have passed through our department have been keen to learn and picked things up well. 

Unfortunately the hopeless have tarnished the reputation of the rest. 

 

Andy

[Winslow Boy]

10 hours ago, Tony_S said:

That is absolutely false. In fact, education is criticised for not filling students up with facts as in the old days but showing them how to analyse and research.

 

 

Well I'm sorry I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. I've encountered both professionally and in everyday life products of our education system who seem quite happy to accept the money but neither the responsibilities nor the desire to do there job/career/life.

 

A relative of mine rants and raves about how stupid some of the people are he encounters. He's in computers so as you can imagine hes going to encounter some inexperienced persons. I point out to him that people arnt 'thick'. Yes they may be inexperienced but not stupid they are just lazy and are quite happy to let other people do there thinking for them so long as it doesnt have an impact on them.

[Dave Hunt]

3 hours ago, AndyID said:

You might not be aware but the term "woke" (whatever it actually means)  has been commandeered by certain a political organization in the USA to brand anyone who might even be quite conservative (with a small "c") but doesn't subscribe to their extremist right-wing dogma.

 

I have to confess that I'm really not sure what 'woke' means as its use seems to vary but I used it as a shorthand for politically correct, know all, always ready to pull others up if they don't agree to the currently fashionable view. Hence my writing, "For want of a better term but you know what I mean." Sorry if it was misleading and I certainly didn't mean to suggest that I have extreme right wing views - far from it. As an aside to that, I had a good friend who was ex-USAF and a captain with United Airlines who suddenly became a virulent Trumpist/Tea Party supporter and began sending far right rants to all those on his email address list. It was so bad that I asked him not to include me in his mailings but he ignored me and eventually I blocked him and haven't heard from him since. Until then he had always seemed to be a reasonable sort of bloke and it came as a bit of a shock to realise that people like him can suddenly become so unreasonable.

 

Dave  

[Dave Hunt]

14 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

........who seem quite happy to accept the money but neither the responsibilities nor the desire to do there job/career/life.

 

It seems to me, and to many of my friends and colleagues, that one of the major failings in a significant proportion of the populace is that they are well aware of their rights (sometimes excessively and misguidedly so) but are either ignorant of their responsibilities or simply care not to address them. Whether this is fostered by the education system or is simply a product of the 'me' culture that seems to have progressively taken hold since about the 1980s I couldn't honestly say but it is all too prevalent (IMHO).

 

Dave

Edited March 23, 2023 by Dave Hunt

[Tony_S]

8 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

or is simply a product of the 'me' culture that seems to have progressively taken hold since about the 1980s I couldn't honestly say but it is all too prevalent (IMHO).

I absolutely and totally agree that the decline in many things started during the 1980s. Those were the years of “no such thing as society” and the dismantling of the welfare state initiated and supported by previous governments. 

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

I have to confess that I'm really not sure what 'woke' means as its use seems to vary

 

It was originally used to mean "awake to" social and political issues, especially racism. But as @AndyID says, it has been adopted by the more deeply unpleasant sections of white conservative opinion, originally in the US but now in Britain, as a general term of abuse for any form of social or political thought they dislike, or which they think challenges their privelged position. Therefore, I would take it for granted that anyone using the word or its derivatives such as wokerati in a pejorative manner themselves is consciously identifying themselves with that faction, or has been infected with such opinions by unreflective reading of certain newspapers. So, ladies and gentlemen of TMN, reflect upon with whom you wish to be identified and what assumptions will be made about your beliefs before making casual use of the word.

 

On the other hand, as a term of abuse it can become a badge of honour, so I'm happy to declare myself woke. 

[Tony_S]

I thought of you all this morning. My copy of 009 News had “A tale of two Paniers” but it wasn’t about green machines with copper bits. Turned out to be about a couple of kits from a manufacturer called Panier. Railway magazines seem quite often to have articles about someone building something from a kit discontinued 30 years ago. At least the article explained how alternative modern parts had been sourced.

 

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Railway magazines seem quite often to have articles about someone building something from a kit discontinued 30 years ago. 

 

Isn't that simply the median time between buying a kit and getting the write-up published?

[Dave Hunt]

26 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Therefore, I would take it for granted that anyone using the word or its derivatives such as wokerati in a pejorative manner themselves is consciously identifying themselves with that faction, or has been infected with such opinions by unreflective reading of certain newspapers. So, ladies and gentlemen of TMN, reflect upon with whom you wish to be identified and what assumptions will be made about your beliefs before making casual use of the word.

 

On the other hand, as a term of abuse it can become a badge of honour, so I'm happy to declare myself woke. 

 

Thank you Stephen. I now think that it will be safer for me not to try to use 'trendy' words or phrases, as being so far from trendy that I couldn't see it with a telescope it is too easy to be utterly misleading.

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Isn't that simply the median time between buying a kit and getting the write-up published?

 

In the 1980s I used to manufacture 7mm locomotive kits under the name of Pilgrim Models, the last ones I produced being in 1987. Last year at Warley I met a chap who said he was in the process of building one. My breakdown crane that I built last year based on a D&S kit was bought for me as a birthday present in 1997 so that seems  quite rapid really. 

 

Dave

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Thank you Stephen. I now think that it will be safer for me not to try to use 'trendy' words or phrases, as being so far from trendy that I couldn't see it with a telescope it is too easy to be utterly misleading.

 

It is entirely possible - indeed I would say essential in a democracy - for there to be people holding socially and politically conservative opinions without being on the "radical right"; what I think we do need is for such people to be true to their conservatism by resisting the influence of those who would polarise society by demonising those of differing opinions, as we see in the US and, increasingly, in Britain.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Compound2632

[Dave Hunt]

12 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It is entirely possible - indeed I would say essential in a democracy - for there to be people holding socially and politically conservative opinions without being on the "radical right"; what I think we do need is for such people to be true to their conservatism by resisting the influence of those who would polarise society by demonising those of differing opinions, as we see in the US and, increasingly, in Britain.

 

There also seems to be the tendency to place people into rigid categories of political, economic and sociological thought rather than accepting that many, or even possibly most, people have views that are wide reaching. In my lifetime I have voted at General Elections for all of the major political parties based on whether I like the majority of their stated policies, bearing in mind that I don't think there has ever been an instance when I totally agreed with everything in a particular manifesto so I suppose it could be seen as an attempted damage limitation exercise. The fact that I have frequently been disillusioned shortly after whichever group gained power is another matter. In local elections I vote for whoever seems to offer the best solution to local issues irrespective of their stated party or independence. Hence if anyone ever asks me which party I vote for I simply say, "All of them, some of them or none of them - it all depends." Sadly, this seems increasingly the minority standpoint and it is becoming more prevalent to be identified with a particular group whatever their policies or track record.

 

Dave 

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Dave Hunt said:

Sadly, this seems increasingly the minority standpoint and it is becoming more prevalent to be identified with a particular group whatever their policies or track record. 

 

There is the false assumption that a floating voter is one whose opinions are all at sea.

[Happy Hippo]

8 hours ago, AndyID said:

Another arduous day on the slopes. Not a cloud in the sky all day.

 

 

If you look closely you can even see someone skiing 😄

 

This time at my local hill - Lookout Pass on the Idaho/Montana line.

 

Off for a couple of days at Grand Targhee next week. It's in Wyoming but very close to the opposite corner of Idaho from here. The  views of the Teton mountain range are fantastic from the ski area. Hopefully the Sun will allow some photo opportunities.

No sign of Gwyneth Paltrow then?

[NHY 581]

4 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

No sign of Gwyneth Paltrow then?

 

Apparently, she's been signed up for the new SKI yoghurt advertising campaign.