Early Risers.

[Erichill16]

Morning All,

Happy retirement to The Q, get cracking on the retirement projects!

Not sleeping again. Didn’t post last night due issues with Hovis and she’s the reason for no sleep. 

Didnt go down to mums as expected.It would have been Dad’s 90th birthday yesterday and I usually arrange to visit Mum on his birthday but on this occasion she was going to be busy so I didn’t press her. I’ve been a bit off it recently and didn’t fancy the drive and we’ve got plenty to do up here.

Called off with a family birthday card, called off at business to meet new member of staff then off shopping. Managed a zoom meeting with friends whilst sat in the car at Meadowhall while SWMBO went inside for a few bits.

Visited beam land first thing this morning to check on how much wrapping paper we had and an executive decision was made, no Christmas decorations, only the few bits that live downstairs will be displayed. Fine by me and if we don’t put up the outside lights I’ll be even happier.

Goodnight.
 

[Erichill16]

Something else to be aware of @polybearand anyone else planning a visit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-63995469

[pH]

I flew from Toronto to Vancouver today and had a new experience - I was on an aircraft being ground de-iced - twice!

 

A winter storm was forecast to arrive in the Toronto area early in the morning with freezing rain, changing to snow later in the day. In fact, instead of being freezing rain, the early precipitation was ice pellets. When our flight loaded, it was just changing to snow. 
 

We went through de-icing (aircraft hosed with a light brown/orange fluid) and anti-icing (hosed with sticky green fluid) then joined the takeoff line. However, the precipitation mix was apparently still sticking, so our aircraft and the four in front of it in line were sent back for a second treatment. We eventually got off the ground two and a half hours after our scheduled time for leaving the gate.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_deicing_of_aircraft

Edited December 16, 2022 by pH

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a dark Charente.   I had my usual 3 monthly chat with the Quack yesterday, nothing to report, thankfully.  On my return I headed up to the mairie to have a little cat with the mayor.   When we had our usual ceremony on Armistice day I'd seen that one of the plaques on a war grave had fallen off and broken.  The French repatriated their war dead to their own communes and most of the gravestones are to the same design with plaques like these on them.   The war memorials only have the names of those with no known grave on them.

is the broken plaque.  On the day I chatted to the mayor and though she wanted to do something no plan was n place.   

Anyway the brain engaged and I came up with the idea of glueing the plaque back together on a metal backing plate such as stainless steel or aluminium then bolting it back onto the headstone.  The mayor thinks this is a good plan and is happy for me to get going so today I'm off up to the metal fabricators to try and source a backing plate.   

 

Apart from that there is nothing on the calendar for today but that state of affairs is likely to change.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

 

 

 

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Very Early Er this morning.  I have some homework for my meeting today to do. Pah!

 

I also received and email with a list of questions I was asked about in September.. Guess what.. perhaps the people writing the questions should talk to their colleagues.. I need to chase one item....pah!

 

Very thick frost here this morning. It is supposed to be warm8ng up over the next few days. I hope this comes true as my joints are not happy with life at the moment.

 

I need to venture out today as I have some errands to run. Nothing exciting but they need to be done. Hopefully they won't take long.

 

Mugatea ready to drink then..homework...

 

Stay safe!

 

Baz

[iL Dottore]

10 hours ago, Tony_S said:

He lives in Norfolk. Mobiles don’t work well enough in some places to rely on them. 

Which makes the inappropriate Sunday morning call on the landline even more appropriate in illustrating how unreasonable certain business behaviours by certain bosses are.

 

The French have the right idea, banning any work communication over the weekend https://mymodernmet.com/french-law-bans-workplace-communication-after-work-hours/

 

And it seems they have the right approach https://www.businessinsider.com/are-the-french-the-most-productive-people-in-the-world-2009-8?r=US&IR=T

 

Sort of makes a mockery of the 24/7 availability/mandatory unpaid overtime/we own your *** approach of some companies

[Grizz]

Morning All

 

Well I’ve finally just about thawed out from yesterday’s adventure. We had to clear ice formations from a tunnel. Sadly the photos don’t do it justice and my iPhone didn’t like being in a freezer. 
 

 

 

Still today I am back in the relative warmth of the top of the South Downs, continuing to build the stables….happy days.

 

Have a great day all.

 

ATB Grizz

[iL Dottore]

1 minute ago, Grizz said:

Morning All

 

Well I’ve finally just about thawed out from yesterday’s adventure. We had to clear ice formations from a tunnel. Sadly the photos don’t do it justice and my iPhone didn’t like being in a freezer. 
 

 

 

Still today I am back in the relative warmth of the top of the South Downs, continuing to build the stables….happy days.

 

Have a great day all.

 

ATB Grizz

I reckon you’d need a bit more than a one bar electric fire to warm up that model railway layout room….

[AndyID]

11 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Sort of makes a mockery of the 24/7 availability/mandatory unpaid overtime/we own your *** approach of some companies

 

One approach that works quite well in smaller public corporations in the US is to issue stock options to all employees. They are an option to buy a certain amount of the company's  shares at the price on the date of issue in the future. e.g. if a share was selling for ten quid today I could buy it a year later for ten quid when it was selling in the market for twenty quid. I could then sell it for a significant profit at no risk.

 

Effectively that makes all the employees part owners in the company. I've seen it work quite well but I'm not sure if it will be very effective at larger companies.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

to have a little cat with the mayor.

A case of a “dropped h” altering things entirely 🤣

 

Good morning and welcome to a still-frozen House of Fun. Not a lot to report. Still feeling the loss of a friend here. 

[AndyID]

3 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

A case of a “dropped h” altering things entirely

 

 

Not at all. It's well known that Décembre 15 is "Manger le Chat"

 

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl,

A very poor night's sleep for both me and Ben, joints painful, couldn't get comfortable.

 

RAF the nearest thing to a Christmas present was the officers serving dinner to those of us on duty on Christmas day itself. We still has to pay for our normal dinner of course.

GEC, nothing from the company at all.

When Our bit of GEC got taken over by BAe, still nothing and our section wasn't allowed to join the share scheme till after I left.

Conoco - Phillips at bacton gas works, Christmas dinner for every one, including drinks all paid for by the company.

Tesco. Nothing, except extra work preparing systems to be left unattended.. though they did sell off fresh goods that couldn't be kept for peanuts prices.  I got a huge turkey one year, that had have wings and legs cut off to fit in the oven and then only just. Price? 2/3 off..

This company , originally, Christmas dinner, including retired from the company ex staff, drinks not paid for , plus a good Christmas box.. the box was gradually eroded to being rubbish, the retired staff were no longer invited. Now this year the Christmas dinner has gone, but the boxes have been increased in value.

 

I have to go to effin clown today, it's the nearest place there is a bank. (Barclays)

I've also got a letter from the Halifax wanting me to confirm I am UK tax payer, so I've to fill the form in and post that.

 

Ben the I want out Collie, enjoyed a slow wander on patrol. He enjoyed gruffing at the pigeons.

 

The weather womble on TV is reporting low temperatures across the UK, well it's not that bad here , the remains of the Snaa is melting.

 

I appear to have been given a leaving present of the sniffles, runny dnose, and sore throat, though the sore throat has been on and off since teaching my replacement, normally I could go all day without speaking to some one.

 

Time for a muggacoffee..

 

 

[AndyID]

11 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Water is crazy stuff. All that simultaneous freezing, melting, evaporation and sublimation going on.

 

 

Perhaps the strangest thing about water is why it expands (and becomes less dense) when it freezes. We all tend to take it for granted that ice floats in water but very few (if any?) liquids do that when they freeze. Water's mechanism is critical to aquatic life and probably much more than that. If ice was less dense than water our planet would be completely different.

[Barry O]

Homework.. done! Yippppeeeeeddddooo 

 

@AndyID  I still have my British Aerospace shares from when it was privatised in pre history ?1980?

 

share achemes have been available in the UK for a long time.. but my opportunity to buy shares in other companies didn't happen for various reasons.

 

While it is forecast to warm up here the thick overnight frost isn't  shifting...

 

 

Egg banjo eaten.. mugadecaff ready.. time to answer some emails..

 

Baz

[New Haven Neil]

Morning from a chilly rock at -2c.  Airport closed due to ice, Mrs NHN got as far as the drive and came back in - the hail overnight has frozen solid, it's lethal out there.

 

Christmas at sea - serving dinner to the crew, otherwise nothing.

NHS - nothing.

Civil service - nothing.

Director/technical manager of a small company - took all staff and their partners out for a full power evening meal, all drinks supplied, small bonus in pay as we could afford.

[AndyID]

4 minutes ago, Barry O said:

 I still have my British Aerospace shares from when it was privatised in pre history ?1980?

 

share achemes have been available in the UK for a long time.. but my opportunity to buy shares in other companies didn't happen for various reasons.

 

 

Of course it does not always work-out favorably but it's a lot better to have people working for a company than viewing themselves as mere employees. I've had a lot of stock options that turned out to be worthless but not always. I was fortunate to be able to convert some into the down-payment for this in Southern California

 

 

We flogged it long ago (much to MrsID's great displeasure) but sometimes you have to do. Anyway, it's probably a lot better than still living in Paisley.

 

 

 

 

[Mike Bellamy]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

They are an option to buy a certain amount of the company's  shares at the price on the date of issue in the future. e.g. if a share was selling for ten quid today I could buy it a year later for ten quid when it was selling in the market for twenty quid. I could then sell it for a significant profit at no risk. 

 

When I was riding the Black Horse at Lloyds bank, there was a share savings scheme where a fixed amount was taken from salary to buy shares - at the end of the five year period you had the option of taking the interest or buying share at the price they were when you signed up to the scheme. When I was made redundant back in 1997, I didn't cash in my shares as they were going up in price and I had the pay-off to live on until I got another job. All went well until the financial crisis and the purchase of Halifax/Bank of Scotland which resulted in a Government bail-out and a crash in the share price.

 

I still have those almost worthless shares - what was once part of my retirement plan for a round the world cruise would now only get me a week in Skegness (other cheap UK resorts are available).

.

[AndyID]

5 minutes ago, Mike Bellamy said:

 

When I was riding the Black Horse at Lloyds bank, there was a share savings scheme where a fixed amount was taken from salary to buy shares

 

 

That's not quite the same. (Actually I probably call it a rip-off.) An options system does not require any contribution from employees until the options are exercised and that's only going to happen if the current share price is greater than than the option grant price.

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. It was colder last night than the night before but it didn't feel as cold probably because the wind had dropped. Its still showing as -3C outside so its doubtful that I'm going out today.

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

Another bright, sunny, but cold, currently -6C start to the day here in the northwest corner of England. I will shortly be setting off for my weekly walk to the butchers for the week’s meat rations. After that, I’ll de-ice the car before WE set off for the Trafford Centre. Not much else planned for the day, but then again that could always change. 

 

Back later. 

 

Brian

[PeterBB]

12 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Being a hilly rock, there are any places here with poor (here in NHN Towers) or no reception. 

 

Apparently operation of 'smart' (sic) meters depends upon mobile signal to work.  A friend recently had one forced on him, after insisting there was no point as he had no mobile signal at all, and of course as he lives behind a big bit of rock, it didn't work.  The electricity authority here (Government owned) then wanted to charge him to install a conventional meter. Just like wot the one they took out a month prior. 

 

As you may imagine, the second word was 'off'.  Issue still ongoing, may get an update tomorrow at the bike club.

As mentioned earlier no reception where I was last week but inspite of informing the electricity company of that fact repeatedly they did come to try and fit one ... thankfully BiL asked them to use their mobile to contact the company ... no meter fixed but, even now they still keep sending him letters asking him to have a so-called 'smart meter'.  

 

Note: this replacement keyboard must be so sensitive that typos are frequent especially an 'A' that comes up after a capital rather than an 'a'.

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

One approach that works quite well in smaller public corporations in the US is to issue stock options to all employees. They are an option to buy a certain amount of the company's  shares at the price on the date of issue in the future. e.g. if a share was selling for ten quid today I could buy it a year later for ten quid when it was selling in the market for twenty quid. I could then sell it for a significant profit at no risk.

 

Effectively that makes all the employees part owners in the company. I've seen it work quite well but I'm not sure if it will be very effective at larger companies.

 

I think its John Lewis who do something similar here. Although this year I beleive that no dividend was paid due to a drop in profits. Many of the big banks give shares in there 'bonuses' but they restrict when then can be sold.

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from a Sidcup which has barely crawled above freezing all week, and which according to the car was minus 4 when I took Younger Lurker to school. WFH today because he has a 12.15 finish and I need to pick him up.

 

Share save schemes in the UK tend to be offered in conjunction with share option schemes; you enter into an agreement to save so much a month, and at the end of 3, 5 or 7 years (depending on the rules) you use your savings to buy shares at the strike price of the option scheme, or you get your money back if the options are below water. From memory, you get no interest if you take the cash. The advantage to employees in this sort of scheme is that there is no or less tax on the option gain (the difference between the share price and the strike price). The rules restrict the vale of options to something relatively paltry like £30,000 over 5 years. Details are a little hazy - I have never had one of these but we did look at offering one around 10 or 15 years ago.

 

We didn't go for it because it did not seem as good as the scheme we had in our private company (the EU has missed the humour in labelling our size of companies as "large privates"). We were offered a certain number of options with a strike price of nil, and when you exercised the option you paid tax on the option gain. It worked quite well when the share price was going up and you could sell your shares. But once the share price started falling no-one wanted to buy shares and you were stuck with them. Now the share price has fallen to zero and some people have lost a lot of money; although to be fair they tended to be the people who had been making the strategic decisions....

 

What it did do at one stage was expand the ownership beyond the chosen few and we had around 600 shareholders. Not a vast number but a significant proportion of employees in some of the main hubs.

[BoD]

Morning all

 

Relatively mild here but still not mild enough to melt the lying snow and the car will need ‘sorting’ before we go anywhere.  Where I live we have a large storage heater. It’s called the North Sea*.  Winter temperatures are always a degree or two warmer here than even a mile or so inland.  We can have no snow but there will be a good covering there to. It works against us though when the wind switches to the north and east.  We can get the hammer then.

 

 

* That’s probably true of the whole county, Maritime Temperate climate and all that, but we notice the effect quite markedly on the coast.  

Edited December 16, 2022 by BoD

[DaveF]

It's cloudy and still freezing this morning.  It has started well, I rang the surgery to make an appointment to discuss some test results from a healthcheck a little while ago and have 2 face to face appointments next week - with a nurse on Monday afternoon and a GP on Friday morning.  The nurse will also look at a sore toe while I am there.  I was only on hold for a couple of minutes when I rang.

 

Yesterday I checked my bank account and found that the residue of the money from Mum - the flat sale less fees - is now in my account.  So that is very good news.  The agent's and solicitor's fees were both a bit less than the original quotes which is very good too.

 

I had twelve e mails purporting to be from Paypal asking me to authorise a payment to Bitdefender, all for the same very large amount.  Obviously I didn't click on the link but forwarded one of them to Paypal's spoofing address.  The giveaway is that they went to an e mail address I don't use for Paypal.  On looking up the freephone number in the e mail on "Who called me" it appears that a lot of people have received the same e mail.

 

I deiced the car and set off for church but would have been early so called at the Quayside and took a few photos, some should be below.  There were a number off offshore support ships in yesterday, most of them seem to have gone again today - I often look on the AIS website.  It was very icy so I din't go near to the edge of the Quay just in case I slipped and fell in.

 

The churchwarden who normally unlocks the church is ill so I did that and got everything ready, I ended up doing the reading as well as the serving as several people could not come - and of those who did two had fallen on the way.  I managed not to.

 

Afterwards I called at the pharmacy to have my toe investigated, if it isn't better I said I'd go back on Monday but now the nurse can see it I shouldn't need to.  He thinks it may be a cold sore, after checking that I do not seem to have circulatory problems.  Then I filled the car with petrol which is now 149.9/litre which is somewhat better.

 

In the afternoon I read and caught up with some TV I'd recorded, then in the evening continued reading and watched another programme from Germany  of Christmas music.

 

Northern Wave at Blyth Town Quay 15th Dec 22

 

 

Northern Wave at BlythTown Quay 15th Dec 22

 

 

Looking up the harbour from Town Quay

 

David

Edited December 16, 2022 by DaveF