Castle Aching

[Regularity]

One idea for the US Senate was for it to be composed of the Governors of each State. 

Instead they went for two elected senators for each State, who were independent of the Governors. The idea behind this is to give each state a chance to be heard.

To counter this, Congress has a lower house comprised of representatives based on (in theory) districts of similar population sizes, much like we have MPs and MEPs. The idea behind this is to give each Congressional District an equal say. This lower house has a lot of power. 

It strikes me that the current structure of the EU is very much like the original proposal for the Senate of the USA, but without granting any power to the House of Representatives.

It irks me when UK politicians talk about the "Sovereignty of Westminster", as if MPs are the source of all power. They aren't. Their mandate, and the sovereignty of parliament, comes from the people. 

 

The problem (in my view) with the EU is that it is primarily a "superstate" where the Council of Ministers (each national premier) gets together to decide on the broad outlines of the programme, leave the detail to the Commission, and expect the Parliament to vote them the money. 

 

There are two solutions to this: dissolve the current structures and revert to a trading arrangement based on a customs union and not a lot else, or transfer significant power on clearly defined areas of competence to the European Parliament. (Pure federalism in the truest sense of the word, as practiced in Germany and the USA.)

The current set-up is an in-between arrangement which lets national leaders pretend they are important, and takes democratic voices out of the decision-making process.

 

I would rather we were saying to the EU, "Reform, or we are out of here," than our current petulant stance. We might get some support then.

 

But as for WotW.

Oh dear.

How can such good actors deliver such crass dialogue? How can such an appalling script get past the commissioning process? 

What on earth was Robert Carlyle doing in such garbage?

Oh, hang on, he was also in Stargate:Universe...

[Hando]

Woah fellas, steady on! Let's not get too political.

I think we move away from the Brexit issue and concentrate more on the model railways, or at least criticizing TV programmes.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

I always liked the 1953 version of WOTW - it had a certain adherence to the plot of the book, even though Britain became the US. However in the reality of 1953 then the US was the dominant power, while in Well's book set far earlier Britain was more or less the dominant power. But all those WOTW type scenarios now seem rather dated - we have far greater home grown threats to worry about now. I suspect if the Martians arrived now they'd be viewed as a bit of light relief.   

[Compound2632]

43 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

I always liked the 1953 version of WOTW - it had a certain adherence to the plot of the book, even though Britain became the US. However in the reality of 1953 then the US was the dominant power, while in Well's book set far earlier Britain was more or less the dominant power. But all those WOTW type scenarios now seem rather dated - we have far greater home grown threats to worry about now. I suspect if the Martians arrived now they'd be viewed as a bit of light relief.   

 

Wells' Martians are wiped out by exposure to Earthly diseases. In a truly up-to-the-minute version, we'd be wiped out by exposure to Martian diseases, no matter how well-intentioned the Martians themselves were.

[Edwardian]

49 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

I always liked the 1953 version of WOTW - it had a certain adherence to the plot of the book,

 

I could certainly enter into the spirit of it, and I daresay would find it more entertaining the the BBC's dull, obscurely moralising, and essentially pointless effort.

 

49 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

even though Britain became the US. However in the reality of 1953 then the US was the dominant power,

 

 

I note in the trailer the emphasis upon it being the red planet!

 

49 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

while in Well's book set far earlier Britain was more or less the dominant power. But all those WOTW type scenarios now seem rather dated

 

 

Angst at the height of empire.

 

49 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

- we have far greater home grown threats to worry about now. I suspect if the Martians arrived now they'd be viewed as a bit of light relief.   

 

Well, a change is as good as a rest, they say!

 

 

[Edwardian]

Re Chore of the Worlds, someone posted a review by the BBC's rather narrow target audience:

 

"fearing bad CGI and a preachy, explicatory tone, I was soon seduced: it’s pretty much perfect Sunday night television."

 

Last time I'll believe anything in the New Statesman! 

 

Didn't even make the reviewer think twice about cancelling Trident.

 

No, don't let's start on that ...!

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Didn't even make the reviewer think twice about cancelling Trident.

 

 

Perhaps cancelling tripods would be more apposite ...........

[monkeysarefun]

I highly recommend Zomboat, based on the H G Wells story about how zombies can't get you if you are tootling down a canal on a narrow boat.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

I highly recommend Zomboat, based on the H G Wells story about how zombies can't get you if you are tootling down a canal on a narrow boat.

 

*covers eyes*

 

And what when you get to a lock?

Or what if the zombies have a scrap of intelligence and work out that if you open the "downstream" lock paddles the narrowboat will be left perched high and dry on the bottom of the cut?

Or.... Or....

 

Nevermind, Zombie Apocalypses are more convincing that Martians any day!

 

Given that the BBC will make a series about any old tosh, perhaps we could interest them in Wroxham 1909?

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

And what when you get to a lock?

Or what if the zombies have a scrap of intelligence and work out that if you open the "downstream" lock paddles the narrowboat will be left perched high and dry on the bottom of the cut?

 

 

Head for the nearest navigable river asap.

[TheQ]

44 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Head for the nearest navigable river asap.

Head for the Great Ouse Relief Channel!!!!!

[Hair_Dave]

3 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

I highly recommend Zomboat, based on the H G Wells story about how zombies can't get you if you are tootling down a canal on a narrow boat.

 On a similar vein, Mega Piranha, entertaining, but not quality

[Hroth]

15 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Head for the Great Ouse Relief Channel!!!!!

 

But check the tide tables and make sure your watch is correct...

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

And what when you get to a lock?

Or what if the zombies have a scrap of intelligence and work out that if you open the "downstream" lock paddles the narrowboat will be left perched high and dry on the bottom of the cut?

Or.... Or....

 

Nevermind, Zombie Apocalypses are more convincing that Martians any day!

 

Given that the BBC will make a series about any old tosh, perhaps we could interest them in Wroxham 1909?

 

No the next BBC adaptation is Zombie Martians - Night of the Living Dead. Apparently it's a cost effective way to reuse CGI footage of dead Martians and dead humans ............... 

 

[corneliuslundie]

I have always fancied taking a boat on the Witham Navigable Drains, and the Martians would never think of looking for you there.,

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

Were social mores fixed, or reasonably so, from 1780-1920?

 

I find it hard to imagine that the vast array of technological changes, and the changes in the distribution of material wealth that they caused, over that period didn't have at least some social impact, even if it was no more than to exaggerate hierarchical particularities, creating the high and rickety dam which burst in the 1960s.

[webbcompound]

The growth of a "middle" educated class meant increased opportunity for mobility for those in that position. The lack of any kind of safety net meant that the ability to fall rapidly into dire poverty was also available with the workhouse providing the final position. A significant component of the system was the belief that you got where you were as a result of your own hard work, or conversely fecklessness, and so the division was assumed between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor. We are rapidly recreating those conditions and beliefs today, as the polarisation of views on welfare, and the punitive system of applying it show.

Edited December 3, 2019 by webbcompound

[Nearholmer]

My cynical take on it is that money always talks, so where there is new money society changes. Of course, a double game goes on, whereby the old tries to defend its position against the new, and the new tries to climb the ladder faster by aping the old, but change almost certainly occurs.

 

But, that is change "at the upper end", while the really huge changes, numerically at least, over the period were the very pronounced decrease in the rural working class, and the huge increase in both the urban working class and the urban under-class. That created an entirely new set of social mores, a rich mixture of popular culture, and the easily forgotten self-improvement movement/ethic, which spanned upwards into the middle classes. Simultaneously rural popular culture took a real battering, which was probably why people like Hardy were so keen to record it before it fizzled-out altogether.

 

My impression is that people living through the period didn't see the social situation as static at all, but were hugely exercised about issues of class, and staking out the boundaries that gave them a good number of others to look down on, because it all seemed so threateningly fluid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2019 by Nearholmer

[webbcompound]

[nick_bastable]

1 hour ago, AVS1998 said:

 

It makes you wonder where our respective Achingverse characters would sit within that time period (if we say, the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1920). Perhaps not our character counterparts (after all, I'm jolly sad I'm not the daughter of an Earl!) but in realistic terms, it's interesting to consider. 

 

Anyway, let regular service resume... 

 

no I would no doubt be seen cleaning up behind the horses 

 

Nick

Edited December 3, 2019 by nick_bastable
pp spelling as usual

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

My cynical take on it is that money always talks, so where there is new money society changes.

Just as long as it does so discreetly and it certainly mustn’t shout.

[Hroth]

4 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

I have always fancied taking a boat on the Witham Navigable Drains, and the Martians would never think of looking for you there.,

Jonathan

 

If you said you were going on the Navigable Drains, no-one would go looking.....

 

The only time we went to Boston on our family narrowboat, we were debating going on the WND, but in those days taking a boat down there was what the IWA called "adventure cruising", not for the faint hearted!  We paused at Anton's Gowt and had a peek down onto the Drain, chickened out and went to moor up at Boston a little way above the Grand Sluice.  I can recommend climbing the Stump, there's a terrific view from the top!

 

The other fun route to avoid Martians is across the Middle Levels from Stanground Sluice at Peterborough on the Nene to Salters Lode which drops you into the Great Ouse.  The journey includes the sharp right-angle turn at Whittlesey which filters out boats longer than about 50ft, passage through March which when we were there was very smelly and the town appeared to have tumbleweed rolling down the street, Through Upwell and Outwell with excellent moorings at the former junction with the Wisbech canal, through Nordelph and so to Salters Lode where you can wait for the tide and watch unprepared boats desperately trying not to be swept up the Bedford rivers while they wait to either get into Salters Lode or go up through Denver Sluice....

 

Its all very nice once you get up Denver, trundle around Ely and then up onto the cam, where the Zombies appear to have taken to the water on the Cam in ruddy rowing boats and think the river belongs to them...

 

But there's no Martians to speak of...

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

5 hours ago, AVS1998 said:

Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised by the videos I'm recommended on the old YouTube. 

 

This, especially, was of interest. 

 

 

The vicissitudes of the English class system which doubtless didn't change much until the Great War are explained here, and the truth of attaining social and cultural capital and class exposed here. Reading some of the comments, given the focus on Pride and Prejudice, it casts many of the characters in a new light, such as the Bennetts and Lady Catherine, who perhaps were closer than we have been led to believe through decades of adaptation. 

 

It makes you wonder where our respective Achingverse characters would sit within that time period (if we say, the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1920). Perhaps not our character counterparts (after all, I'm jolly sad I'm not the daughter of an Earl!) but in realistic terms, it's interesting to consider. 

 

Anyway, let regular service resume... 

 

 

Miss Austin also wrote "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a small village in the west of England, must be in want of a depiction in OO gauge of a GWR terminus". 

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

Miss Austin also wrote "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a small village in the west of England, must be in want of a depiction in OO gauge of a GWR terminus". 

 

I don't know who Miss Austin was - some relation of the Chamberlains? but Miss Austen lived very firmly in LSWR territory.

[sem34090]

Indeed she did. This is why I'm expected to have some kind of knowledge of her life and works for when the public turn up at Medstead asking questions about Chawton.

 

I believe that one of her relatives (Edward Knight Esq. - A nephew of Austen's. Also a first class cricketer and High Sheriff of Hampshire) was involved, somehow, in the MHR's construction actually. I can't remember the exact details.

 

Oh and on a literary theme we had J. M. Barrie living at The Boynes, a few hundred yards back from Medstead's up platform. It is probable, therefore, that the famous author graced our station numerous times. As did his Sister. And the piano that she insisted on taking with her everywhere - I bet that caused some 'fun' for my LSWR predecessors. The close proximity of house and station is best shown with an aerial photo, courtesy of Google;

 

So for all you Peter Pan Fans planning your holidays/pilgrimages and days out...  

Quote

In  the autumns of 1893 and 1894, however, when Barrie did not have a permanent home, he did spend weeks at a time working at his sister Maggie's home at Medstead, Hampshire. This included a period of a few weeks within a couple of months of marrying Mary Ansell; they both stayed there in early autumn 1894, and again in December that year, after an intervening few weeks in lodgings in Fowey, Cornwall. At Medstead, Maggie built a study for her brother, but the extent to which it was used later is not known - it has long since served as a bedroom.

 

Edited December 3, 2019 by sem34090