Early Risers.

[figworthy]

14 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

NHS waste - small demonstration of 'how things were', although this is 19 years ago to be fair.   

 

 

Mum trained as a nurse in the early 50s.  The old hands (those who predated the NHS started) were complaining about how wasteful the NHS was.

 

Adrian

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[simontaylor484]

Andyram 

 

I had a similar occourance a few years ago it started in Morrison's car park the wife's leg was in plaster at the time.

I reversed out of a parking space in Morrison's car park and followed the arrows round the one way section this lunatic in an Astra came flying round the corner the wrong way I shouted it s one way and managed to avoid and drive round. Next thing is he is following me so there was no way I was going home. He followed me for 2 miles then did a starsky and hutch in front of us he jumped out of the car ranging and raving telling me to get out of the car and this and that he jumped and kicked the car leaving a right don't in drivers door. My wife rang 999 and we followed the idiot and gave them a location the police asked us to go home. An officer came round and took a statement.

We heard nothing for a couple of weeks then the police got back in touch it went to court he got convicted of Using violence in a public place it wasn't nice listening to his lies in court questioning my driving etc even when the cps lawyer has stated i have a clean licence drive professionally he even tried to claim the car was already damaged and he was getting the blame . Turned out the idiot was a Store Manager for Halfords he got fined had to pay me over £600 in compensation for our of pocket expenses. Tagged and curfewed lost his job on and his employers got stung by my insurance company for the repair bill.

You get these idiots I am afraid Andy they do get their comeuppance eventually but I do advise front and rear facing dashcam.

 

Hope.you feel better soon it's raw now but it does subside

 

Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord and I shall repay is the phrase that came to mind vicious yes but the wife and autistic son were in the car

Edited February 25, 2021 by simontaylor484
Addition to text re above post

[Ozexpatriate]

52 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

... and "what's next?" ...

I was intrigued by your Leicestershire volcano. Is this the solidified remnant of the core - like a volcanic plug.

 

The volcanic plugs in the linked image were named "Glasshouse Mountains" by one James Cook, RN who thought they reminded him of glass-making structures in his native Yorkshire. They are relative youngsters at 26 million years old.

 

Locally the volcanoes are younger still. I imagine that small bits of them date to perhaps yesterday.

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by Ozexpatriate

[PeterBB]

John, (Coombe Martin) trying to think.  Is Bardon the one with the church on top adjacent to the quarry?

 

[J. S. Bach]

16 hours ago, chrisf said:

 ...snip... Old fashioned technology, such as the trusty 35mm slide projector, is not immune from fits of temperament. ...snip...

Best wishes to all

Chris

Oh, how true!!!

[laurenceb]

Agree with the surgestion of the dashcams Andy. Oh and friend Chris sends his regards

Night awl

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. I know of someone who sounded his horn at a van driver who had cut him up. The van driver took offence at that and tried to force the other driver off of the road. When the van driver returned to his base he was called into the office and handed his P45. The other driver just happened to be the owner of the company who's van it was and employed him as a driver.

Edited February 25, 2021 by PhilJ W

[andyram]

12 minutes ago, laurenceb said:

Agree with the surgestion of the dashcams Andy. Oh and friend Chris sends his regards

Night awl

Thanks Laurence. I hope you are well. Please also relay my regards back to Chris.

[Barry O]

Goodnight all!

Baz

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well I made a start on the 1/4 scale (of the model) engineering company, I first drew out a track plan that both fitted the area and that I was happy with. I then started making some building in the same scale and they looked fecking enormous, I definitely won’t get all that I wanted to get in the space available, so a rethink is in order. 

 

However, this morning work was interrupted by Sheila needing my assistance with the DWP. They’d sent her an email and a text message asking her to ring them urgently. She initially thought it was a scam, but after I’d checked the email address and found that it was from .gov.uk and that the attached phone number was an 0800 freephone number, she was reassured and rang them. After 20 minutes she gave up and replied to the email instead. Having not had a replay by dinner, she rang them again after we’d eaten, jezzz, the music they play whilst you wait for someone to pick up is the worst we’ve ever heard, but she finally got through about 10 minutes before the lines closed! Anyway, it’s all sorted out now, she should get a letter confirming her pension in the next few days, her pension will arrive sometime next month, when she’ll officially be a pensioner!

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[J. S. Bach]

42 minutes ago, BSW01 said:

Good evening everyone

Well I made a start on the 1/4 scale (of the model) engineering company, I first drew out a track plan that both fitted the area and that I was happy with. I then started making some building in the same scale and they looked fecking enormous, I definitely won’t get all that I wanted to get in the space available, so a rethink is in order.  ...snip...

1/4 scale or 1/4 inch scale?

[iL Dottore]

Good morning all,

 

Due to work commitments I have been a relatively intermittent visitor to these pages as of late. But hey-ho, that’s the way it goes.

 

A number of thought-provoking comments about waste in the NHS. It does seem to me that, like many government run institutions, the NHS is penny wise and pound foolish. One thing that particularly rankles is the disposal of perfectly good equipment because some idiot with a spreadsheet has decided (based on God knows what criteria) that it is cheaper to dispose of them rather than to sterilise and recycle. An approach which would’ve horrified the head of supplies in the hospital I worked in, in the US. Every piece of surgical equipment, once used, was taken to a central area where it was thoroughly cleaned, washed, repackaged and then sterilised: either in an autoclave or with ethylene oxide. 
 

As for the fact that some fool claimed that buying some Sellotape from a local poundland would impede the NHS from getting bulk discounts? Well that’s a load of total codswallop and make no mistake. The entire NHS purchasing apparatus needs to be completely shaken up. When the NHS is the world’s largest purchaser of fax machines (yep, that’s right, fax machines!), when it buys OTC medication at a multiple of the cost of the same thing at Boots or when it buys single-use sterile items in multiple packs (so when you only use one item from the multiple pack, which frequently is the case, you have to throw away the rest of the pack because sterility has been broken) then you know that a lot of the people making decisions about procurement and bulk purchasing really don’t have a clue about what the front line needs.

 

It does seem that the NHS suffers from the fact that incompetence and failure seems to be rewarded as opposed to punished. Some well known and publicised NHS “scandals” seem to have resulted in the responsible managers being rewarded with promotions and new jobs. in both the US and the Swiss systems, such incompetents would be out the door so fast their toes wouldn’t touch the ground. At the risk of getting a bit political, I wonder if it is because in the US and in Switzerland patients have a choice of hospitals, clinics and clinicians - which have to keep a high standard and keep a good reputation so that their patients do not go elsewhere. Whereas with the NHS, no matter how bad the service, there is no choice and no alternative.

 

Another busy day awaits and I don’t expect to knock off before 8 pm this evening. Although it makes for a tiring day, it does increase the amount of modelling tokens that end up in my piggy-bank every month. Such has been my productivity as of late, that I am considering raising my sights from the entry-level Fender “Player” Telecaster to the more expensive and more early-Fender authentic Fender “Vintera” Telecaster.

 

Regarding this change of goal, I hope that my chums on ER will keep this news  “under their hats”. Although I have mentioned to Mrs iD in passing that I regret selling the old Squier Telecaster and I plan to replace it, she remains blissfully unaware of the true nature of my devious plans!
 

All shops in Switzerland will be reopening on the 1st of March (albeit with mask wearing requirements and limited numbers of shoppers in the shop at any one time) and I’ll be off to look for my Telecaster.

 

And on that cheerful note, another cup of coffee awaits then my morning stroll with the Wolfpack.

 

Have a great POETS day

 

iD

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all

 

At my  time of life I should know how bad an idea it is to be untidy.  The lesson was learned yet again yesterday when i was replying to a PM from a fellow RMwebber.  I needed to refer to a magazine from January 1964 and went to the shelving wherein it reposed in an Easibinder with the other 1964 issues.  The binder was not where it should have been.  To cut a very long story short it turned up several hours later.  I remembered at once why it was where I found it but not why I had not put it back in its proper place.  Old dog, new tricks perhaps.

 

For light relief (?) I revisited one of the draft itineraries that I have prepared ahead of a future holiday.  What I had written no longer accorded with the advice on "The man in seat 61" website which had led me to incorporate an overnight train from Tangier to Marrakech in the plan.  That trip was never going to be first on the list when our civil liberties are restored.  My favourite travel company has a trip to Morocco in its current brochure, much of which is already waste paper thanks to that ruddy virus.  It would have participants fly to Marrakech, taking to the rails only on arrival.  I would rather do the journey by rail and sea, thank you very much!  All my trips in gestation include Eurostar, which is on its knees from losing 99% of its business thanks to the virus.  I may have to think again.

 

Today I need to reset the auto-pilot for the fodder run.  My local Tesco does not sell own brand custard powder, so I must go somewhere that does.  Four drums of the stuff should see me OK for a while.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from adry Charente.  I did manage a couple of hours trackside yesterday and did see some trains as well as having a good natter with Andy.  Today is fire day. I have our permit from the Mairie and in just over an  hour intend to try and get our garden rubbish burned.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl Inner Tender Hare,

Inner tender? well my arm is.. I think Mister Pfizer punched it ... Hard..

Actually that's all the symptoms I had, until I stepped out of the Landrover at work, now my legs feel like I've run a marathon..

SWMBO was only complaining of a sore arm when I left, but she hadn't tried to get out of bed by then..

 

2 hour sleep then short awake then 2 hours sleep , then long awake, 1 hours sleep  then semi dozing, for an hour, Ben was only 3 minutes early today..

 

Ben the very happy Collie wanted out this morning.. Full moon , no cloud, dawn beginning to arise, he was very happy to have a good snuffle around.. He got a cold nose though, it's very frosty, So I started the landrover before the patrol, and by the time I was ready to set off the wipers cleared the ice.

 

It's now very light outside. Can't be long before I see the great fried egg in the morning.. Then they'll switch the clocks again..

 

Interesting piece on TV this morning the boss of the biggest producer of Vaccines in the world, an Indian company, he took a bet with his own money, expanded production facilities and got a contract with the Oxford Astra Zenica group starting production of the vaccine last August... Said he had worked with them before and trusted the company..

 

I'll head to the orange shed after work, to get the blocks to raise the trailer, also I'll pick up a couple of bags of gravel to top up the driveway a little.

 

Quite what I'm going to do today I don't know, for the first time since I came back off furlough I've caught up with the back log..

 

Time to.. go to pretend to do something..

[Barry O]

Ey up!

Lovely sunrise here.. yes spring is springing..mini daffodils are starting to flower, bluebells are budding and mild hayfeaver has benn noted.

 

Today should include a walk about as things need to ge bought, calories need to be burnt etc.

 

Have as good a day as you can! Hopefully @grandadbob is ok as he has been missing for a few days.

 

Stay safe!

Baz

[Andrew P]

Glorious morning so I need to get in the Bathroom and then go for a walkies.

 

Stay safe all.

[New Haven Neil]

Morning, from a gloriously sunny but chilly FR, with touches of frost in places (no sign of David Jason though).

 

A quick shave, sh and shower then orf on the bike for a club run to the Big City, to the railway station no less, where we are partaking in a fireman's breakfast, served on a shovel apparently, I hope they didn't do anything else on it.

 

No sign of tunnels under the rock as yet, perhaps Boris's ide will go to the same place as the proposed UK-Fraggle Rock monorail some years ago - oblivion.  Where it belongs.

[Tony_S]

Good morning.

It was cold enough overnight for some frost on shed roofs and car windscreens. 
Aditi will be off to the dentist this morning for a filling. She won’t need to drive or be driven, we can see the dentist’s surgery from our house. 
Otherwise, not much happening. There may be parcels arriving via Amazon and Hermes.

Tony 

Edited February 26, 2021 by Tony_S

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from Sidcup where the sun is once again streaming over my shoulder. There is a slight frost as was predicted last night by the BBC weatherman but that will go shortly.

 

today will see me attempting to finish some urgent work needed by colleagues in Mexico. Hopefully they won't have to translate it to Spanish before they submit it to the Mexican tax authorities because it is well over 100 pages of written report long.

 

NHN - presumably the biggest worry to Fraggle Rock about the Roundabout is that you will no longer be able to be in splendid isolation from the rest of us, and you'll find yourselves catching more of our disease! 

 

I was notified that something with connections to Brighton and an ocean near us is on its way. It does not really fit in to the scenario for a layout that has been in long gestation but I am sure I will find an excuse .... and may be one day start the practical side; the dreaming is so enticing!

 

That reminds of the house names when I was at primary school; Marsh, Weald, Downs and Foreland. You'd never guess the school was in Kent, would you?!

[New Haven Neil]

Ah, Fenwick, Curwen, Lawrenson, and Chapman in our case at school, all old boys who had achieved something or other of note.  Unlike me.

Edited February 26, 2021 by New Haven Neil
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