Early Risers.

[polybear]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

I'm looking into hiring a coach to take a group to the Ally Pally for the exhibition in March next year. The coach will cost £720 and to make it viable I will have to fill at least 36 seats (£20 per seat) if I can fill the 53 seat coach that will be £14 per head. That will be for the coach only, one of the local MRC's ran a similar trip to Warley and booked tickets for all. Then a few dropped out and they were left with unused tickets and made a loss.

 

That suggests to me they went about running the trip in the wrong manner - you first seek those who wish to go and get full payment, then you book the coach; if anyone subsequently drops out then they only get a refund if their ticket can be sold to someone else instead.  Not difficult.

 

1 hour ago, Phil Parker said:

Also, the average life expectancy is now 81, when in your "good old days" it was 71. Not much of an upgrade there either.

 

Though if you were a lot happier during those 71 years and unhappy(er) during 81 years then that should be considered as well.

[polybear]

Harry went to a new home this morning.......😭

 

The new owner is an ex. RN Sea King Spannerman (Junglie Flight), then a Choo Choo Chug Chug Spannerman and now a Chug Chug Driver on Bear's local line; he already owns a Guzzi and CX500 Eurosport (plus others?) so I'm pretty confident he's off to a good home.  Oh yes, and he'll get to live in a Garage.....

[polybear]

Bear here....

 

I eventually got thru' to Checkpoint Charlene....I explained the S.P. and the fact that their own Druggie says I need a F2F with a Doc (and written in my notes).  What happens?  I get a "call back" appointment....

 

The Doc went thru' all some of** the in's & out's of a D.A. then decides I need a F2F.  No sh1t Sherlock.....

(**The druggie asked far more questions than the Doc did).

And at this point (when other Docs have said "I'll see you at 2pm" etc.) he says "make an appointment" and F***s Off. 😡  And that's all on top of the fact that Star Trek's very best Universal Translator would struggle to understand his accent.

 

So after calling them straight away I finally end up with an appointment on Friday afternoon......

 

Is that a Rant?

 

BG

[Danemouth]

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

When ITV came to our bit of Somerset it was TWW and I recall at the weekends was very Welsh. Some man called Ivor Emmanuel was on frequently. 

TWW was "Television Wales & West" and started broadcasting in  1958 - they only held the franchise for ten years before being replaced by HTV.

 

Ivor Emmanuel's programme was "Land of Song", the only TWW production to make it onto the national network.

 

I am sure this vital piece of information will make your day  😁

 

Dave

[Tony_S]

11 minutes ago, Danemouth said:

am sure this vital piece of information will make your day  😁

I did know Ivor made it to the National ITV but as TWW was our local channel he probably did a few other things!

[TheQ]

Thought everyone knew Ivor made it to national TV..

[TheQ]

Nuncheon was had, half a pork pie,

Then things unmentionable were worked on, especially that bridge.

 

[Danemouth]

21 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I did know Ivor made it to the National ITV but as TWW was our local channel he probably did a few other things!

 

He was in the film "Rourke's Drift" as a private and did manage to warble a tune.

 

Going back to ITV if you lived in Cardiff once it became available in colour you had two aerials - one tuned to Mendip the other to Wenvoe - mine are still installed though not used.

 

In the days before S4C the Welsh Language broadcasts were on BBC1 so when they came on if you didn't speak Welsh you switched over to your Mandip aerial!

 

Dave

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

That suggests to me they went about running the trip in the wrong manner - you first seek those who wish to go and get full payment, then you book the coach; if anyone subsequently drops out then they only get a refund if their ticket can be sold to someone else instead.  Not difficult.

That's why I'm only doing the coach only. It will be up to the participants to sort their own tickets out. Firstly I have to get 36 bums to go on the seats to make it viable. I will ask for a £5 deposit that will only be returnable under certain circumstances such as illness. About ten years ago my MRC organised a trip to the same show and ordered tickets for about sixteen members, two dropped out at the last minute but our treasurer spotted a couple of people he knew in the ticket queue and sold the tickets to them. Incidentally when I enquired about the coach the lady in the coach booking office mentioned that they were considering doing the same show including entry, if they went ahead it would cost £39:50. The coach company do advertise a coach and ticket to the big shows on their website but they then are quietly dropped if there's not enough interest. 

[PupCam]

Afternoon

 

6 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

A sudden spate of motorcycle accidents - sunny day, born-again bikers, youths in powerful cars....recipe for disaster.  The advent of middle age bikers with little experience but money enough to buy a Ducati in mid-age crisis mode is a recognised issue, yes they have had a full licence for 30 years, but only had a 250  of some kind with 25hp when young and zilch experience in the last 29 years, getting on a 150 - 200 hp bike really is a baaaad idea. 

 

See loads of them here as visitors, all the gear, no idea, go whizzing off on a straight racing their mates without the concept of stopping at the end of it.  We don't ride TT/MGP week.

 

A good number of years ago I was thinking about "going back to biking" after a long layoff as was a colleague of the same age.    He went out and bought a Honda Fireblade and we all went out to drool over it in the car park.     At the time I thought "Middle age bloke going back to bikes on a street legal racing machine" could well be an accident just itching to happen.      Fortunately it didn't and after a couple of years having scratched the itch he gave it up and I just didn't get round to actually getting a bike.  Some years later as my 60th loomed and my motorcycling itch was really itchy and having discovered a photograph of my mother & late father aboard his AJS 350 single the penny dropped and I thought that's the sort of thing.   A nice, slow chugger that pays homage to my dear father (he always went on about "AJs" and I having only come across Jap Crap in my youth didn't really know what the heck he was on about🤣) and so it has proved.  I've done something like 11000 miles on it now in ~7 years and every single mile has put a grin on my face.      The fact that such sedate machines suit me is probably due to the fact that I'm a chicken and was never a speed freak even in my youth unlike my mates who regularly wrapped their 250s around the nearest lamp posts or into the doors of cars pulling out of side turnings without looking properly (I live in fear of these idiots to this day).    

 

Which reminds me.   There were a lot of bikes out yesterday when we were out and about with the grand kids.  We don't encourage them to spot or count "yellow cars" when we are out driving  (what's the point of that?) but we do encourage them to try and spot and count motorbikes.    I look on it as an investment in someone else's future.

 

4 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

In other news just in ..... Dr. SWMBO has accepted an invitation to attend St. James's Palace in recognition of her work.  She has been told to attend by her most senior director and will be presented to Their Majesties for her remarkable, sensitive but lesser-known, work with Samoan peoples and plants a couple of years ago.  I don't get to go.  

 

That's a shame.

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

One of the problems I have seen in the previous posts, which is almost inevitable, is the viewing of the past through the prism of today. By today’s standards, there were plenty of things which are now considered as horrible, ghastly, unpleasant, or just downright wrong. Equally, although in much, much smaller measure, there were things that were objectively better.

 

But reviewing those decades through today’s eyes does lead people to jump to the wrong conclusions. We have to look at those decades through the eyes of the people as they were living through it. 

 

Thus for most Britons, after living through the traumas, devastation and sacrifices of the Second World War, the late 40s and the 50s were, if not “good times” (a hackneyed phrase if there ever was one) certainly much, much better than what went before. And in the early 60s, you had the explosion of youth, culture and the “white heat of the technological revolution” which imbued that part of the decade with a vibrancy not seen since.

 

Very true.   

 

3 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Although I in no way suffered living in a slum, perhaps I was a lot closer to that end of the spectrum than you - unemployed father, who then spent 3 years retraining as a teacher.  My university thought I had made a mistake and not read the question correctly when I put my father's occupation down as student.   So money was tight in the 60s and while there were certainly good times to be had, it was for me by no means some imagined pseudo-Eutopia that some posters seem to imply.

 

I grew up in the same period; We didn't live in a slum (far from it), breadwinner employment was sporadic, money was tight, good times were to be had (mostly train spotting on the ECML) but for reasons I won't go into on here life was no pseudo-Eutopia for me!   Father always used to say to me, "School days are the best years of your life"  - he was of course completely wrong.

 

However,  would I rather my grandchildren grow up in the current age or the age in which I grew up in?      No contest, I really fear for their future and if I could whisk them back to my era I would.    

 

No one is denying the incredible advances in medicine and technology etc that helps make life, better, longer and happier for everyone but you can only have what is known at the time.    What is clear is the diet of the general populace (myself included) is poorer today with all the health dangers that that leads to and all that fantastic new technology is far from being used exclusively for good.

 

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

Sorry, but how is being told "You have cancer, you are going to die", better than, "You have cancer, here's your treatment plan."? The NHS could run much more easily with the money on offer if they could refuse to treat anything they couldn't in the 1960s, but I'm not sure most people would consider this an improvement.

 

The NHS could run even more easily with the money on offer if they could refuse to treat anyone with effectively self inflicted aliments and that's a very slippery and difficult slope!

 

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

Also, the average life expectancy is now 81, when in your "good old days" it was 71. Not much of an upgrade there either.

 

I believe I am correct in saying that UK life expectancy is either falling now or expected to fall over the coming years although ICBA to go and find the actual data.

 

ION

 

A chug was chugged on the Beeza.   I was going to run round the Puppershire TT course but it was closed due to road works ...     No matter, a nice run over to Old Warden to see what was kicking about and a run back.     It was the first time the Beeza has been out for some weeks and all though quite a bit of oil has leaked out in the intervening period it didn't end up in the sump to cause starting difficulties.    That's a fun little machine and still doing sterling service 85 years after it first chugged.   Anyway, that'll be the last chug, bimble or thrash for a couple of weeks because after Wednesday I won't be able to get a crash helmet on for a bit.

 

A successful evening's astronomy took place last night.    The moon appeared in the right part of the sky as predicted and allowed for in the setting up of the telescope.   Fortunately I got the timing slightly wrong and it was "in my bit of sky" about an hour earlier than initially thought (perhaps I forgot BST 😃).       Some video clips of the moon were taken but have yet to be processed to produce a proper image.  

 

It was a funny colour!    According to the weather lady on the TV at lunchtime blame is to be attached to the smoke from the American wild fires!

 

 

The full moon is actually this evening but there's a fat chance of seeing it.

 

I'm going to have to give the telescope's equatorial mount a serious coat of looking at.   Remember, it's a "budget" beginners scope and we all know what @iL Dottore quite rightly says about such equipment.   Unfortunately I can't afford a semi-professional upgrade and even if I could it would be mostly pointless because of "my sky" or rather lack of access to it.      One good thing though I think Alexa must be telepathic.   I was thinking to myself "I wish Alexa would turn off those ruddy garden lights next door".    Shortly afterwards they went off - Spooky!

 

TTFN

 

 

Edited August 19 by PupCam

[Winslow Boy]

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

I remember my maternal grandfather taking me into the always-curtained parlour, a room seldom entered without good reason, to watch something called "Television".  Because on that, and in the days when it was only BBC (not even BBC1) and transmission hours were more or less an hour at lunchtime and a few in the evening, the afternoon would be occupied with a special broadcast of "The Budget".  Studio commentary, of course, as the concept of televising Parliament itself was many years away.  

 

Grandad explained that this was important because prices would change in an era when prices seldom changed very much at all.  

 

In other news just in ..... Dr. SWMBO has accepted an invitation to attend St. James's Palace in recognition of her work.  She has been told to attend by her most senior director and will be presented to Their Majesties for her remarkable, sensitive but lesser-known, work with Samoan peoples and plants a couple of years ago.  I don't get to go.  

I would double check about not being able to go. My father was presented to Prince Charles as he then was for some charitable work he'd done for I think Age UK?.

 

It was at St. James Palace and as I lived in London at the time I had to escort him across 'town' and then collect him afterwards. It turned out that I could have accompanied him, as plenty of other guests had there family there. So I would contact the Palace and see what they say. This is assuming you do wish to attend of course.

[rockershovel]

One thing almost never mentioned is that the Windrush was by no means the first phase of mass immigration of imported labour.

 

Pakistani labour had been imported as early as 1939 to work in the run-down heavy industries of the North-West. Some thousands had been recruited in the Mirpur area in the early phases of what would become the Mangla Dam project - delayed by war and Partition, and finally completed in the 1960s.

 

The Lancashire textile industries, worn out by thirty years of war and depression, notorious for bad conditions and low wages and surrounded by some of the worst accomodation in the land, faced the total collapse of their business model - which essentially consisted of buying cheap raw materials from the Empire and selling back processed goods. Large swathes of their labour force, having escaped into the services or munitions work showed little inclination to return. 

 

So they set about a policy that would blight everything it touched in the coming years; "keep cutting until the profits appear". Many thousands of Pakistanis were imported, mainly from Mirpur; even today, over 70% of British Pakistanis are from, or derived from this region. Work visas were issued as compensation to villagers displaced from the dam site and subsequent inundation. 

 

There are no breezy, almost jovial period newsreels showing this influx, mostly via Liverpool. West Indians were mostly English speaking, mostly nominally Christian and mostly sufficiently prosperous to afford their tickets. Not so these impoverished rural villagers, many arriving in debt to their labour agents. This was no part of the "New Jerusalem" and the government was well aware of it.

 

 

 

[Hroth]

23 minutes ago, Danemouth said:

In the days before S4C the Welsh Language broadcasts were on BBC1 so when they came on if you didn't speak Welsh you switched over to your Mandip aerial!

 

You were lucky to have the option.

 

Even though we lived in England, we were in a radio shadow for BBC and Granada, so had to put up with BBC Wales and HTV from Moel Y Parc.  Apart from the mandatory Welsh programming on BBC, there were also many other disappointments when programmes we wanted to see were unavailable because they had been displaced by local Welsh content.

 

 

[Winslow Boy]

8 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

One thing almost never mentioned is that the Windrush was by no means the first phase of mass immigration of imported labour.

 

Pakistani labour had been imported as early as 1939 to work in the run-down heavy industries of the North-West. Some thousands had been recruited in the Mirpur area in the early phases of what would become the Mangla Dam project - delayed by war and Partition, and finally completed in the 1960s.

 

The Lancashire textile industries, worn out by thirty years of war and depression, notorious for bad conditions and low wages and surrounded by some of the worst accomodation in the land, faced the total collapse of their business model - which essentially consisted of buying cheap raw materials from the Empire and selling back processed goods. Large swathes of their labour force, having escaped into the services or munitions work showed little inclination to return. 

 

So they set about a policy that would blight everything it touched in the coming years; "keep cutting until the profits appear". Many thousands of Pakistanis were imported, mainly from Mirpur; even today, over 70% of British Pakistanis are from, or derived from this region. Work visas were issued as compensation to villagers displaced from the dam site and subsequent inundation. 

 

There are no breezy, almost jovial period newsreels showing this influx, mostly via Liverpool. West Indians were mostly English speaking, mostly nominally Christian and mostly sufficiently prosperous to afford their tickets. Not so these impoverished rural villagers, many arriving in debt to their labour agents. This was no part of the "New Jerusalem" and the government was well aware of it.

 

 

 

And don't forget the great number of prisoners and displaced persons who decided to stay on and were 'encouraged' to find employment in the mills.

 

My mother had first hand experience of this as she was a newly qualified civil servant and was shown the mills and mines as part of her induction.

[iL Dottore]

4 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

In other news just in ..... Dr. SWMBO has accepted an invitation to attend St. James's Palace in recognition of her work.  She has been told to attend by her most senior director and will be presented to Their Majesties for her remarkable, sensitive but lesser-known, work with Samoan peoples and plants a couple of years ago.  I don't get to go.  

Well done that SWMBO.

 

As WB posted, it would be advisable to check whether or not you could accompany Dr SWMBO to St Jame's Palace. After all you supported her in her endeavours and you'll be kicking yourself for a long time to come if you find out that you could have gone and didn't.

 

Ask away, they can only say Yes or No!

[Tony_S]

35 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

their business model - which essentially consisted of buying cheap raw materials from the Empire and selling back processed goods. Large swathes of their labour force, having escaped into the services or muniti

Because the British did not allow commercial cloth production in India to be imported to Britain. “Did not allow” was done by punitive import duty and quota. . Hence Gandhi using “homespun” clothing as  a protest against British factory cloth. My father in law wanted to go on protests against such laws when he was a student in Lahore but his father wouldn’t allow him to. By the time he came to the UK in the mid 1950s all his cotton clothing was made in India. The family were all originally from the part of what they call “Undivided India” that is now Pakistan but moved during partition. 

Edited August 19 by Tony_S

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

According to the weather lady on the TV at lunchtime blame is to be attached to the smoke from the American wild fires!

You'll be getting the leftovers from Hurricane Ernesto in a couple of days. That should wash out the wildfire smoke.

[PupCam]

Just now, Ozexpatriate said:

You'll be getting the leftovers from Hurricane Ernesto in a couple of days. That should wash out the wildfire smoke.

 

I think it's just turning up now 🤣

[iL Dottore]

On 11/08/2024 at 22:34, Erichill16 said:

Bear baiting, an event for the next Olympiad?

On a totally different topic...

 

I was reading through my complementary copy of the latest issue of Fortune Teller's Monthly (incorporating the Soothsayer's Times), when I came across an article about the 2028 Olympics.

 

Apparently, in the new-at-LA-Olympics-sporting-category of Assorted Bear Baiting; Australia got the gold for free style "synchronised spider incursions" (the entry from Oz got The Bear to vacate the ring in 4 femtoseconds, a new world and Olympic record)  whilst Switzerland got the gold in "hide the cake from the Bear" (using the clever approach of hiding the cake under a Swiss glacier which was then covered in whipped cream - causing The Bear to run out of allotted time).

 

They also published a photo of the proud athletes...

[PhilJ W]

26 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

You'll be getting the leftovers from Hurricane Ernesto in a couple of days. That should wash out the wildfire smoke.

 

25 minutes ago, PupCam said:

 

I think it's just turning up now 🤣

What's turning up now is just a precursor, Ernesto isn't due until the end of the week. There will be a break in the cloud tomorrow night about midnight according to the Norwegian weather service.

[DaveF]

 It has remained cloudy all day, in the last hour there have been a few spots of rain.  My cleaner came, while she cleaned I cleaned the ornaments (well some of them) which meant I ended up having a late lunch.

 

Then I decided it was time to have a look at my bank account to check there is nothing amiss, all appears to be well.  I check quite often.

 

I did a bit in the garden including removing some of next door's ivy which as usual is trying to come over and through the fence.  I have noted that it is time I poured some weedkiller into the gap between the fence at the bottom of my garden and the people behind me.  I and my then neighbours put a fence at the bottom of our gardens on our boundary line over 40 years ago.  A few years later the people in the houses behind us also put up fences, but a good 9 - 12" on their side of the boundary.   Nowadays they moan when weeds grow in the gap, I once got cross and pointed out it is their land not mine!  As they don't do much I just water weedkiller into the gap.  Perhaps I should remove my fence and try to get them to accept that I own their bit of land - that might make them do something.

 

Apart from that I've done a bit more throwing out so the wheelie bin is nearly full and have run things on nickel silver strips in my house.

 

This evening I'll probably watch some quizzes and read.

 

David

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, Winslow Boy said:

And don't forget the great number of prisoners and displaced persons who decided to stay on and were 'encouraged' to find employment in the mills.

 

My mother had first hand experience of this as she was a newly qualified civil servant and was shown the mills and mines as part of her induction.

".... I've worked till the sweat/near had me be't/ with Russian, Czech and Pole/ in the shuttering jambs/of the hydro dams/ or under the Thames in a hole"

 

Construction was no different. 

 

The mills were something else, though. Try seeking out the Ealing comedy "The Man In The White Suit" and you see a background which could been filmed any time from the late 19th century onwards. 

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I fell asleep in the chair this afternoon and woke up with a stiff neck. @DaveF's comments about weeds coming over from next door prompted me to check on the brambles next door in the council's property. Quite a few runners making a rush for my front garden so I've put the hedge trimmer on charge and cut them back tomorrow, I might need the loppers for the thicker ones.

[Winslow Boy]

9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

".... I've worked till the sweat/near had me be't/ with Russian, Czech and Pole/ in the shuttering jambs/of the hydro dams/ or under the Thames in a hole"

 

Construction was no different. 

 

The mills were something else, though. Try seeking out the Ealing comedy "The Man In The White Suit" and you see a background which could been filmed any time from the late 19th century onwards. 

The Man in the White Suit with Alec Guinness. That takes me back.

 

All gone now of course,  apart from the odd one or two which are managing to hang on as apartments, storage and small business buildings.

 

Remember one got burnt down a few years ago  and they found some illegal immigrants in the ruins. Absolutely tragic.

[Ian Abel]

Monday...

 

Slow and peaceful weekend, mostly some casual walking and relaxation. Mrs managed a 4 mile walk with one of her friends around a local lake while I took advantage of the time and walked Whitney, then rested my eyes 😉

 

Today Jemma coming to pick up Whitney, should have been last night, but due to terrible weather at JFK she was delayed home for 5 hours!!!

 

Weather today, 16c first thing and sunny, but air quality deemed unhealthy for "sufferers" so I'm staying in the air conditioning. High of 26c expected later.

 

Carry on.