Early Risers.

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

It was raining quite heavily earlier and is still coming down but has eased off a bit.

I had quite a good night's sleep and The Back has also eased a bit.  It still hurts but is nowhere near as painful and moving around is not as difficult as yesterday so no painkillers required at present.  It's still announcing its presence though if I move suddenly.  I'm not expecting  (or expected) to do anything physical today. 

I have been "asked" if I would like to use the small bedroom (ex layout room) as an office instead of "cluttering" the dining table etc.  This does make sense as the printer lives upstairs in another bedroom and it's a pain in the whatsit going up and down stairs when I print something although it is good exercise.  Whilst reconnoitring the area I noted that a lot of my stuff had already been moved in there along with a small computer desk so it looks like it's a done deal!    I'll give it a try.

I'm expecting a phone call in the next couple of hours to advise me when John the roofer is arriving.  Hopefully it's sooner rather than later.  The rain has stopped for now and the forecast claims there may be some sunny spells this afternoon.

Time for some bran flakes so farewell for now.

Have a good one,

Bob.

Edited August 25, 2020 by grandadbob

[Happy Hippo]

11 minutes ago, Barry O said:

I note that tanks are obsolete in Britain.

They have been obsolete for many years and there are  studies by the academics every so many years to reinforce the theory.  However, along comes a major conflict and guess what?

 

Tanks are again, flavour of the month.

 

The fact that they are also lumping APCs into this mix really shows no practical thought for the alternative to  transporting infantry and their ever burgeoning kit list into action with a suggestion, however slight, of protection against shrapnel and small arms fire.

 

You need tanks to fight tanks.  you might have a brilliant infantry force, but come up against an army which is tank heavy and you have problems.  

 

I say this with the proviso that your enemy, able to have a large tank force also has the financial resources to have an air force that has either air superiority or at least neutralises your own.

[Barry O]

Not many of current politicians have ever been involved in any form of conflict at the pointy end of the guns.. yes Challenger 2 is, age wise  obsolete, but it is so obsolete it is deployed in Estonia as part our contribution there..

 

Of course we are protected by our helicopter fleet..shame they can't be out in the field for very long and need more time being fixed than fly..

 

Baz

[New Haven Neil]

Morning.

 

Francis is definitely north of Liverpool.....and is currently deluging (new word?) Fraggle Rock.  And then some.  To say it is 'sipping' down is somewhat of an understatement.

 

Mrs NHN dropped off for her bus in Royal Ramsey (too wet for the bike, too expensive to park her car in the Big City, and not allowed to use the several empty parking spaces in her works car park (DHSC) as she is insufficiently senior (!) so my day is now my own - but I may be drowned trying to make it to the garage!

 

iD, the NHS in my day ran on knee jerk reactions, with demands from NHS HQ in Leeds (the place with the posh private swimming pool etc....) for some needless statistic passed down from our Primary Care Trust senior management to us minion level managers to collate and answer. 

 

As an example, it went off the scale after the Harold Shipman murders became public, with all sorts of 'deaths per GP surgery per people over 60 with blue eyes born on a Tuesday' sort of stuff.  There was something of a panic when some of our statistics went in, of course somebody in HQ a hundred miles away has no idea which surgeries are in deprived areas which of course have higher death rates than those in the posh end of town.  But they didn't ask for our knowledge, just raw numbers.  Then told us we were wrong.....or killing folk.  /rant.

 

 

[simontaylor484]

Good morning k

Very wet here this morning 

Hope all are well

Glad to seethe Bbc have changed their mind on Rule Britannia. But not singing the words?

The assault on being British continues 

Tanks obsolete i have had my eye on a nice little pannier for a while

Edited August 25, 2020 by simontaylor484

[Happy Hippo]

8 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

I have had my eye on a nice little pannier for a while

A gentleman of impeccable taste.

[BoD]

58 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

You need tanks to fight tanks.  you might have a brilliant infantry force, but come up against an army which is tank heavy and you have problems.  

 

Could the infantry not just form a square?

[Happy Hippo]

46 minutes ago, Barry O said:

Of course we are protected by our helicopter fleet..shame they can't be out in the field for very long and need more time being fixed than fly..

Plus they have never been deployed against a well trained professional army who have sufficient Manpads to deal with a helicopter threat.

 

Many years back I was told that it took approximately 9  man hours of maintenance to keep a Lynx (then the Army's sole airborne A/T platform) in the air for one hour.

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Francis was persisting down for most of the night but now has moved on and it appears to have stopped raining. The forecast is that it won't be back this far south but north of The Wash it will be doing an Arnold S (I'll be back). Thoughts are with Tony and Aditi today. Time to run a bath, be back later.

[simontaylor484]

Issue ballons on sticks to the enemy 

[Coombe Barton]

Memories, for Tony and Aditi, are coming thick and fast, as they do every day. They're there to cherish.

[Winslow Boy]

• Do you mean we still have an army. I thought that they had been replaced with a foreign aid budget. Now that's a thought may be we could pay them not to shoot at us.

Edited August 25, 2020 by Winslow Boy

[Joseph_Pestell]

32 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Plus they have never been deployed against a well trained professional army who have sufficient Manpads to deal with a helicopter threat.

 

Many years back I was told that it took approximately 9  man hours of maintenance to keep a Lynx (then the Army's sole airborne A/T platform) in the air for one hour.

 

Helicopters and tanks both require an awful lot of manpower to keep them operational. I remember being told some years ago that a tank with a three man crew needs a total of 27 people to keep it going and a tank with a four man crew needs 64 people. No wonder that there is saying that logistics is more important than tactics in modern warfare.

[Simon G]

Morning all,

After a single day’s respite from the last storm, Francis is with us.  It may not be as windy as it was over the weekend, but it sure is wet!  It has been a consistent downpour since I got up.  With yesterday being a nice calm sunny day, I decided to get a few outside jobs done, such as grass cutting and lifting some potatoes.  All these jobs were done Ok, but with the result that I overdid things rather, so I have a very stiff back this morning.  This is a regular occurrence for me and I know it will ease in a day or so.  Usually a decent walk helps it loosen up, but that isn’t likely for the next few hours!

 

Yesterday, I finished attaching legs to my layout, which is now sitting on its side, awaiting being lifted into position.  I am not sure if Mrs G will be able to help me do it, so it may have to wait for the weekend when no 1 son comes to stay for a few days.

[Andrew P]

Thoughts with Tony and Aditi at this time.

[TheQ]

18 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Helicopters and tanks both require an awful lot of manpower to keep them operational. I remember being told some years ago that a tank with a three man crew needs a total of 27 people to keep it going and a tank with a four man crew needs 64 people. No wonder that there is saying that logistics is more important than tactics in modern warfare.

Logistics always was more important, and those that didn't realise that generally lost..

Ask Napoleon about his supply line when he reached Moscow..

[iL Dottore]

9 hours ago, BSW01 said:

...I did in fact eat alfresco today,

I’ve never eaten an alfresco and I thought I knew a lot about Italian food...

6 hours ago, TheQ said:

...I have Ransome's biography somewhere,  he had a most unusual life,  working as a spy in Russia for the secret intelligence service,  but suspected as being a spy for the Soviets by MI5....

Wasn’t it de rigeuer in the 1940s/1950s that if you had gone to either Oxford or Cambridge and ended up in the security services, you’d also have a part time job with either the KGB or GRU?

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

Not many of current politicians have ever been involved in any form of brain usage

There, fixed it for you...

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

...iD, the NHS in my day ran on knee jerk reactions, with demands from NHS HQ in Leeds (the place with the posh private swimming pool etc....) for some needless statistic passed down from our Primary Care Trust senior management to us minion level managers to collate and answer...

According to my medical colleagues retired or just about to retire from the NHS, it still does work on knee jerk reactions (as the panicked shipment of elderly patients from hospitals to care homes at the start of the pandemic seems to show). According to the same colleagues, there are two types of manager in the NHS: those, like yourself Neil, who are involved ensuring staffing, resources and the like are provided to the clinical staff and those who produce “mission statements”, “reach out programmes”, “inclusion awareness trainings” and so on. The former are both underpaid and overworked, the latter - the complete opposite.

With all the “jumping-on-the-latest-bandwagon” currently going on at the NHS, BBC and elsewhere, I fear that things will get worse before they get better.

48 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

A gentleman of impeccable taste.

Indeed, truly a distinguished, erudite and discerning scholar of railwayana. Such learnéd men should be cherished and encouraged.

 

Just back from “The Boy Doctor” (the GP who took over from my friend - my former GP [rtd] - this youthful doctor is young enough to be my son, scary thought. Nice lad though). Did some blood work, numbers all going in the right direction, and got some “recreational drugs” (actually an NSAID for a musculoskeletal problem, but as we are born into this life to suffer, any relief is purely recreational).

And on that drug fuelled, alcohol-addled* note, I bid you good day!

 

iD

*from the fumes of the ETOH containing hand sanitizer, as you ask

[Happy Hippo]

21 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Helicopters and tanks both require an awful lot of manpower to keep them operational. I remember being told some years ago that a tank with a three man crew needs a total of 27 people to keep it going and a tank with a four man crew needs 64 people. No wonder that there is saying that logistics is more important than tactics in modern warfare.

9:1 was the ratio we used to quote at the School of Ordnance.  That was the average figure required in supporting roles units  to keep one fighting man effective. (A coincidence that it was the same ratio to keep the Lynx airborne for 1 hour)

 

However that is a very arbitrary figure. and it becomes much more interesting the further you break it down into the various elements.  The trouble is that you end up being awash with so much statistical information that you drown under the weight of the information and it becomes useless.

 

Statistics can be used very effectively but the target parameters need to be carefully thought out before demanding information.  Taken in context and in isolation the information can be invaluable, but if you take masses of statistical information and block it together to create overall figures, then the information that is published can be  both corrupted and contradictory. 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2020 by Happy Hippo

[TheQ]

5 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I’ve never eaten an alfresco and I thought I knew a lot about Italian food...

Wasn’t it de rigeuer in the 1940s/1950s that if you had gone to either Oxford or Cambridge and ended up in the security services, you’d also have a part time job with either the KGB or GRU?

 

 

iD

*from the fumes of the ETOH containing hand sanitizer, as you ask

But AR Was there during the Russian revolution 1913-1919 the GRU and KGB hadn't been invented yet..

[Joseph_Pestell]

5 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Logistics always was more important, and those that didn't realise that generally lost..

Ask Napoleon about his supply line when he reached Moscow..

 

Very true about 1812 and he was probably not the first. I am not a military historian but I am sure that there were many cases of small forces winning against superior forces by attacking their supply lines.

 

And of course, "scorched earth" warfare was very much about denying food supplies to the enemy. An army marches on its stomach.

[Coombe Barton]

Just been onto the Wicks and B&Q websites. They’re all out of gopher wood.

[Coombe Barton]

20 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Logistics always was more important, and those that didn't realise that generally lost..

Ask Napoleon about his supply line when he reached Moscow..

Many know this chart. I use it in teaching, about charts, not war

[New Haven Neil]

Cap'n Kernow has Engine Wood....

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

We had an awful lot of rain overnight, but it’s currently dry, but windy (outside). The plans today are I’ll complete a Sainsbury’s Grand Prix after breakfast, as I need to put in a prescription. I would have done this last night but I was advised to stay inside instead. After the Sainsbury’s Grand Prix I’ll make a start of the bathroom, mainly taking down pictures, shelves and the bathroom cupboard.

 

Baz, I didn’t fall asleep during the scan, my biggest problem was consciously preventing my foot from tapping to the radio, which just happened to be playing some music that I like. It’s a good job I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, as that top plate gets very close to your face doesn’t it?

 

Stay safe, stay sane, enjoy whatever you have planned for the day, back later. 

 

Brian

[tigerburnie]

Me thinks 'tut storm is on it's way, batten down the hatches everyone and stay safe(and maybe check your house insurance lol).