The Night Mail

[br2975]

4 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

 

We also had an Olympic torch at one station, she never went out. 

 

Jamie

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We had several similar epithets

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"Seal Pup" - so annoying you felt like clubbing him to death !

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"Kingsway" - there was a large public toilet in the subway beneath Kingsway, so this 'colleague' was christened 'Kingsway' because he was 'the biggest sh*thouse in Cardiff !"

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"Laptop" - a very short officer, so 'laptop' = a small PC.

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"Franz Klammer" - after an indescretion with two firefighters over a desk ! (imagination required)

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"ROLF" - a certain senior officer who was a 'Right Orrible Little F****r" - a perfect nickname, and with whom I refused to shake hands after being awarded my gongs.

[4630]

One of the ones that I recall was ‘treacle’ - used as a description, as in that person is a bit treacle - ie thick and slow.

[Tony_S]

4 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

I'm surprised that no one has contributed "they're as thick as two short planks"...

 

My son returned from school one day . He must have been at the age when children try out insults. Matthew said he had told Billy that he was as thick as two short planks.Billy replied “well you are as thick as one short plank”. 

[Hroth]

2 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

My son returned from school one day . He must have been at the age when children try out insults. Matthew said he had told Billy that he was as thick as two short planks.Billy replied “well you are as thick as one short plank”. 

 

The number was definitely a multiplier - 2 was a sort of average, but some people would make you think of three or more...

 

[Northmoor]

3 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Holly carp! Demand to see the evidence. I once had a problem that looked like a bad ECU. Turned out to be the engine thermostat. Cost about $3.

My regular garage, which I do trust, eventually cured a fault with our Focus whereby after the replacement engine (£££) refused to start.  It turned out that in a certain combination of conditions, the ECU could send a spiked electrical signal via an unfused connection to the BCU (which controls most of the dashboard etc.).  Why Ford would decide not to protect a £600 component with a 60p fuse is a question that presumably only their electrical design engineers can answer.

[Winslow Boy]

7 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

My regular garage, which I do trust, eventually cured a fault with our Focus whereby after the replacement engine (£££) refused to start.  It turned out that in a certain combination of conditions, the ECU could send a spiked electrical signal via an unfused connection to the BCU (which controls most of the dashboard etc.).  Why Ford would decide not to protect a £600 component with a 60p fuse is a question that presumably only their electrical design engineers can answer.

It is not necessarily the cost of the part but the cost of the thinking.

[Hroth]

10 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

It is not necessarily the cost of the part but the cost of the thinking.

 

We think, therefore we make money!

 

[Willie Whizz]

27 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

The number was definitely a multiplier - 2 was a sort of average, but some people would make you think of three or more...

 

Something that appealed to me many years ago when I heard it: “As thick as two short planks bolted together and glued”!

[jamie92208]

3 hours ago, figworthy said:

 

I've had the, err, pleasure of working with some one who was perhaps best described as being the full hamper short of a picnic.

 

Also "Upminster",  way past Barking (check the tube map).

 

And "Not the sharpest knife in the drawer".

 

Adrian

I had a Uncle who was described as Dagenham.  Just one stop past. 

 

As to The Olympic Torch.  I found her in the report writing room, yet again one morning so I went and got a saucer of milk and put it down next to her,  "Why have you done that Sarge?".   Because I thought thatbyou've

Become the Station Cat.  Within 2 minutes she was out on patrol.   I would probably get sacked for that now.  However she was seen at a shift do in a compromising situation with the Inspector which probably explained a lot. 

 

Jamie

[PhilJ W]

9 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

Sorry what was that. I'm a bit busy at the moment unwrapping a sledge hammer. I don't know you offer to do people a favour and at the last minute they change there minds. Wouldn't have happened in my day of course, but nowadays these youngsters flip and change like a corpse on a giblet.

 

Now where did I put my Shed Monthly.

A corpse on chicken innards? Don't you mean gibbet.

[monkeysarefun]

 

 

"A couple of roos loose in the top paddock."

Edited July 17 by monkeysarefun

[BSW01]

The nick names of two guys I worked with were:

Bungalow, as he had nothing upstairs 

Pilot light, as he never went out (of the office) 

Edited July 17 by BSW01

[SM42]

44 minutes ago, BSW01 said:

The nick names of two guys I worked with were:

Bungalow, as he had nothing upstairs 

Pilot light, as he never went out (of the office) 

 

We had a bongo  or two

 

Boots Off, Not Going Out

 

Andy

[BSW01]

I’ve just remembered another

BIFFO

Big Ignorant F@#ker From Oldham 

[AndyID]

If you are buying smart water for $5 a bottle, it's not working.

 

https://www.vincethesignguy.com

[br2975]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

 

However she was seen at a shift do in a compromising situation with the Inspector which probably explained a lot. 

 

 

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On a driving course early in my 'career' and shared the car with the instructor and 2 other PCs, one a female who worked in Barry.

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On calling at my then station ( Ely ) for tea, one afternoon, I customarily greeted my Inspector with the age old "All correct sir !" which dates from time immemorial, and was uttered to authority even if World War 3 was taking place on the streets.

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The WPC asked "why does everyone say All Correct to bosses ?"

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I explained, and then asked her.............

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"If you were walking Holton Road at 2am and your Inspector pulled up alongside you, what would you say to him ?" 

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Quick as a flash, she replied....."Hello Adrian"

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Yes she and Adrian were.......

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And it was she who later became known as Franz Klammer.

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Edited July 18 by br2975

[jjb1970]

Most car dealership service departments are like the character from Little Britain  - computer says no. Plug in the magic lap top, if that doesn't tell them what to do they're stumped. Not helped by the 'repair by replacement ' philosophy.

 

A few years about Subaru and Mitsubishi dealers were sometimes useful as they had a lot of lucrative business doing performance upgrades on STi and Evo hooligan mobiles so some of them had mechanics and technicians who actually knew what they were doing.

 

I was assured by the local VW dealer that air-con units leak gas because it's impossible for them not to which was why our Golf blew it's gas after about 6 months. When I explained why that was utter carp they replaced the unit under warranty,  it probably only needed a seal ring change.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[polybear]

7 hours ago, Northmoor said:

 Why Ford would decide not to protect a £600 component with a 60p fuse is a question that presumably only their electrical design engineers can answer.

 

So they can sell more five quid BCU's for six hundred quid....

[polybear]

"As thick as Pig Sh1t"

 

"If they had brains they'd be dangerous"

[Craigw]

I worked with two technicians a few years ago that we referred to as Araldite Part A and Part B because they would not work unless they were together.

 

[iL Dottore]

8 hours ago, Northmoor said:

My regular garage, which I do trust, eventually cured a fault with our Focus whereby after the replacement engine (£££) refused to start.  It turned out that in a certain combination of conditions, the ECU could send a spiked electrical signal via an unfused connection to the BCU (which controls most of the dashboard etc.).  Why Ford would decide not to protect a £600 component with a 60p fuse is a question that presumably only their electrical design engineers can answer.

I suspect it was not an engineer’s decision, but a bean-counter. As in:

 

BC: Why do you need this 60p fuse?

EE: It adds a layer of protection against spiked electrical signals
BC: Does that happen a lot?
EE: Very rarely and only in a certain combination of conditions

BC: OK Then leave out the fuse

 

Now, the above may be an imaginary conversation, but the fact is the automotive industry (and elsewhere) have been known to put out less than optimal items that do not have that necessary extra little component that will protect the item against a 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1 million event. The bean counters calculate that any money spent to recompense someone for that 1 in 1 million event resulting in the item failing is more than outweighed by the savings of – say – 60p x 1 million items.

 

Now, such an approach can often be beneficial. I once saw a documentary on airline catering, I think it was for Singapore airlines, and in part of the program, you saw the catering staff discussing how many shrimp to put on the plate for one of the business class starters. The chefs were thinking either three or five shrimp per plate, but the market research people (or whomever looks into this sort of thing) noted that with five shrimp on the plate, there was a certain amount of food wastage; but with three shrimp on the plate, there was no food wastage – every shrimp got eaten . So they decided to put only three shrimp on the business class starter with a concomitant lack of food waste (all the starter was eaten) and at the same time saving a lot of money in the process. 

[iL Dottore]

5 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Most car dealership service departments are like the character from Little Britain  - computer says no. Plug in the magic lap top, if that doesn't tell them what to do they're stumped. Not helped by the 'repair by replacement ' philosophy.

 

A few years about Subaru and Mitsubishi dealers were sometimes useful as they had a lot of lucrative business doing performance upgrades on STi and Evo hooligan mobiles so some of them had mechanics and technicians who actually knew what they were doing.

 

I was assured by the local VW dealer that air-con units leak gas because it's impossible for them not to which was why our Golf blew it's gas after about 6 months. When I explained why that was utter carp they replaced the unit under warranty,  it probably only needed a seal ring change.

I am not adverse to the occasional bit of automotive tinkering, but I haven’t worked on any of my own cars since about 1983. For most of the 80s, back when cars could still pretty much be fixed in your garage or driveway, I was driving a company car– so the company took care of maintenance and repair (although anything serious inevitably resulted in the replacement of the company car with a brand-new one*). In the 90s and 2000s I rarely drove, as I was spending an awful lot of time travelling for business, so our cars got very little usage (less usage = less opportunity for things to go wrong).

 

Since the 2010s, I haven’t worked on any of my cars beyond filling up the windscreen washer solution tank and refuelling them. Mostly because I don’t have the tools, the necessary computer equipment, the knowledge to repair such complicated systems or the garage space. Definitely a far cry from my first car (a 1970s, ex police Plymouth Fury), where I did routine maintenance and once repaired a hole in the radiator, using nothing more than a patch cut from an aluminium can and some extra strength Araldite.

 

As far as I’m concerned all a car needs (beyond the obvious of a decent engine, transmission, suspension, ride and effective passenger safety) are the following:

• Power assisted steering
• Power assisted braking
• A decent radio/CD player
• Integrated Sat/Nav (for when you don’t have a copilot)
• A decent heating and air-conditioning plant

 

* there was a scurrilous rumour that there was an individual, also entitled to a company car, who, when he got fed up with his existing car would “accidentally“ choose a number of routings to his various destinations over the worst roads possible – resulting in a completely knackered car: ergo, a new car 

[Flying Fox 34F]

Mention of Bean Counters has reminded me of a major incident at BR.  During the conversation from Steam to Diesel locomotives, the said Bean Counters apparently saw no point in purchasing Anti Freeze for the diesels. When the winter of 1962 struck, main new locomotives needed very expensive repairs, plus quite a few withdrawn steam locos had to be brought back in to traffic.

 

Paul

[jjb1970]

Too many devices are needlessly complicated for marketing reasons, it obviously works but how many consumers are basically duped into spending more than they need to by clever marketing, influencers and reviewers to buy stuff they neither need nor want, never use and end up feeling ripped off?

 

My favourite example is rice cookers. The rice cooker is a wonderful device and considered an essential part of any kitchen in East and SE Asia (seriously, a lot of kitchens here don't have an oven but spotting one without a rice cooker is like looking for Shangri La) but it is fundamentally simple, add rice, add water, switch on, wait. However, the market is obsessed with expensive rice cookers with membrance key pads for all sorts of exotic functions a few people might use once, fancy LCD screens and talking functionality (I kid not, there has been a craze for talking rice cookers). And then people end up getting sick, find their whizzo devices go tango uniform pretty quickly and go to the super market for a simple and basic alternative which will probably last decades.