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45 minutes ago, Annie said:

Oh that, - just keep quiet about it.  I find it difficult to believe that a Stephenson's gauge engine could go that fast anyway.  It wasn't until later when they had to use enormous long boilers and more wheels to carry it all around as well as add in extra cylinders that they finally could do it.

 

I think it does no harm at all if an elderly lady might hold close a small fantasy that the world would be a better place if the Broad Gauge had continued.

 

Indeed, especially when her home land is lumbered with the old Empire Gauge (3' 6" I believe)...

 

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2 minutes ago, wagonman said:

 

Indeed, especially when her home land is lumbered with the old Empire Gauge (3' 6" I believe)...

 

In Colonial times 3ft 6in gauge suited our landscape well, - especially in the hilly and mountainous North Island.  However in the South Island with their wide plains country they could have done with something wider.  Our railways have been got at by modernists and corporate jargon speakers in the same way that occured in Britain and they are now a shadow of what they once were.

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2 minutes ago, Annie said:

In Colonial times 3ft 6in gauge suited our landscape well, - especially in the hilly and mountainous North Island.  However in the South Island with their wide plains country they could have done with something wider.  Our railways have been got at by modernists and corporate jargon speakers in the same way that occured in Britain and they are now a shadow of what they once were.

 

I see the 'Alpine Express' still runs from Greymouth to Christchurch. My wife went on it last January and was suitably impressed.

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56 minutes ago, Annie said:

You will have to explain that map a little James.  For those of us who live in far distant lands who have naught to fear but militant sheep it is a mite incomprehensible.

 

Well, that's a map of the 1906 General Election results. The yellow represents the Liberal party and, hence, a landslide. It ushered in a period of social reform, yet, represented a high point from which the Liberal party sank to its present relative obscurity.  A strange death indeed, the story of which is part of the current A Level History syllabus, I recently discovered.

 

To me, it represents some nostalgia for all the things we shall not find in the current political landscape.  This is the age of delusion. Unpleasant fanatical populists are now in charge of almost all the political machinery in our nation.  From a resurgence of class warfare to the new Darien Scheme of independence to the inanity of Brexit, we're all in the hands of dangerous morons. Wherever it goes from here, it cannot go well. 

 

I'm going to hunker down on the Tattered Sofa of the Middle Ground, which I am confident I shall more or less have to myself, bar the odd lazing Labrador, and indulge in more innocent and far less toxic fantasies of my own!

 

 

 

 

Edited by Edwardian
grammar
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The point I was trying to make is that besides “unpleasant fanatical populists” seeking votes, you also need a population willing to swallow it hook, line, and sinker, and I’m afraid the two came together there and then for that unfortunate country.

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14 minutes ago, Northroader said:

The point I was trying to make is that besides “unpleasant fanatical populists” seeking votes, you also need a population willing to swallow it hook, line, and sinker, and I’m afraid the two came together there and then for that unfortunate country.

 

Proof of something I've not heard a single parliamentarian have the guts to say openly; the people can get it badly wrong!

 

They all seem to have forgotten Edmund Burke, who once observed that right and wrong was not a matter of arithmetic. 

 

Anyway, the point is, for the benefit of Annie and her ovine constituents, unless you're one of the deluded fanatics who believes against all logic, sense and historical experience, that your particular brand of Magical Thinking will prevail and deliver Paradise Regained, the UK is a pretty depressing place right now.  Between them economic depression, austerity and Brexit have made the past eleven years Hell, and it's only going to continue and continue to get worse.  For a long, long, time.  I pity my children. Meanwhile, while we're fiddling, Rome, in the form of the environment, burns.

 

 

Edited by Edwardian
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I think CA has wandered far enough OT for me to post how cultural our neck of the old NW Durham woods is getting !

1034969743_Crossconc.jpg.9c9ac6eb22ad5fcb13b70a5cee14da84.jpg 

 

The pub next door has been saved as a Community pub and re-opened in the summer (we all own shares). Two of the Northern Symphonia live in 'the Avenues' the other side of the pub so Mike (an oboe player) got levered on to the Committee as 'Entertainment Director',. 

It has been a revelation - those stuffed shirts are brilliantly funny: they played a lot more than what was on the programme, saying how enjoyable it is to play in the pub's upstairs 'function room' so close to their (sell out) audience.

Abigail the licencee had a trio of cocktails already waiting (designed with Mike) to suit each of the main works on the programme. The horn player (all the way down from Greenside our adjoining former pit village) demonstrated how his horn had evolved from the horn French huntsmen wore around them.

dh

Early railway relevance: Greenside, Ryton and the Tyne were apparently connected by a railway as early as 1605 - yonks before Mozart with his toilet humour. 

Edited by runs as required
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3 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Smitings too good for them, they're all very naughty boys!!!

 

The best bit is when IKBs Topper is revealed as a multi-heatray turret, spinnning about and, yes, smiting, several targets almost simultaneously...

 

Kaboom!!!

 

With his cigar pouring out clouds of the noxious Black Smoke, that lies in the valleys and river courses and suffocates all who are enveloped by it. Except of course the Churchill family who are strangely immune.

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3 hours ago, Regularity said:

Of course, the main building is called La Grand Arche.

Which is an unfortunate homophone for a German word...

 

Remaining in the same nether region;

 

The name of the salesforce automation system we were flogging into Germany in the mid-1990's was called FastTrack.

 

Much merriment ensued when hearing potential customers pronouncing it in more gutteral German, coming out as "Fass-trek" - sounding exactly like "Fass Dreck" - 

(barrel of sh*t -  which was by chance much better description and not a symptom of honesty breaking out in our Sales & Marketing).

 

 

Edited by TT-Pete
Crimes against grammer.
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5 hours ago, Annie said:

In Colonial times 3ft 6in gauge suited our landscape well, - especially in the hilly and mountainous North Island.  However in the South Island with their wide plains country they could have done with something wider.  Our railways have been got at by modernists and corporate jargon speakers in the same way that occured in Britain and they are now a shadow of what they once were.

 

It would be relatively straight forward just to double the gauge - possibly add a quarter inch or so.  The old Great Western acheived their final gauge conversion in just a few days.  Is widening as easy as narrowing?

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11 minutes ago, Adam88 said:

  Is widening as easy as narrowing?

 

Almost certainly not - all the civil engineering and in particular the width of the formation - the foundation layers for the track - will have been built for the narrower gauge and require widening. Where re-doubling is being done in Britain, it isn't as simple as just laying new track on the old formation: to meet current standards, the entire line has to be re-engineered. 

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1 hour ago, wagonman said:

It's funny how the media start squawking about Class War when the Left strikes back, ignoring the fact that the Tories have been fighting, and winning, class war for years. 

 

Here was I forgetting that two wrongs make a right. Yes, let's demonise the hated Few (and I note a few of the Few have already been named) in favour of the entirely abstract Many. 

 

I say "a plague on both their houses".  People versus Parliament, Many versus Few. Deliberately devisive populist claptrap the lot of it!  Oh for a party that wanted to help "the All"!

 

 

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9 minutes ago, sem34090 said:

Personally I think using 'The Few' today is perhaps the best choice of words...

image.png.bc9446615877dfdb9c2aef74ad0b1f15.png

Another day, perhaps.

 

Yes, a pity the "the Few" has been given a different meaning.

 

Sounds like Labour's taxation policy: Never was so much owed to the Many by the Few. 

 

 

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What puzzles me is why nobody ever seems to mention one of the biggest problems. At the time of the financial crash it was accepted that personal, and national borrowing was too high. Unfortunately the econony had grown to a position where the only thing driving the economy upward was the borrowing. Cut back on the borrowing and the economy would shrink which would mean less money for businesses and workers which would mean less spending unless we borrowed more rather a vicious downward spiral. We have an economy based on contiual growth rather like a mad treadmill where we need to work harder to spend more to keep it going. If the government borrows a lot more we  will probably have to pay more tax to cover the interest which will take more money out of the system.

I find the enthusiasm for inward foreign investment puzzling for at the end of the day the profits go out of the country. Investment by UK nationals or Pension companies would keep more of the profits with the UK.

One of my concerns about the Climate Change problems is a personal belief that in order to achieve the reduction it is likely to mean we need a big reduction in consumption which will starve the economy of the money needed.

It is factors like the above that mean there are not simple solution to economic issues.  Gordon Brown thought the tax relief on investments by Pension funds too generous and the money raised by stopping them could be better used elsewhere. Unfortunately that coupled with new regulations that demanded firms had to ensure pension funds were keeping pace with pension liabilities and the increasing life expectancy meant final salary pensions became too expensive for firms. The net result is that an awful lot of workers will find their pensions will be a lot less generous than those of their parents. It may well cause the government (and hence us) problems if too many need benefits because their pension is insufficient.

 

Don

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