Castle Aching

[woodenhead]

20 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Buddhism: the spiritual way to bury one's head in the sand...

 

I hope you appreciated me liking your post!

Nope, it's about accepting you're on a journey and along the way there will be a lot of challenges to overcome, how you approach these challenges is key to happiness.

 

I'm not a religious person but I am spiritual and I accept that at a very deep level we are all connected I just don't look upwards to a god who somehow designed all this cr8p.

 

Like away

[Donw]

Well we really have got going on this. Some interesting points someone mentioned black Wednesday. As far as I remember John Major was just as involved as Norman Lamont. So I find it rather odd that he thinks we should listen to him on matters to do with Europe. I note too others are very keen to see then end of the Tories. Personally I took a socialist view in my youth until we had Labour governments which changed my mind.  Whatever happens the people with money and power will ensure the public at large are kept chained to the system. They need our labour to keep the wheels turning and in the modern economy need us to keep consuming. So it is in their self interest to at least feed us crumbs. Having worked in a nationalised industry which was privatised I do not believe re-nationalising it with solve matters. Some problems will no doubt be resolved but others will appear. So I fear a strongly socialist government more than anything else.  This is not because I am stinking rich indeed I suspect houses in Mr Corbyns constituency would be out of my league. 

This is a very imperfect world with very imperfect systems. We are probably very lucky to live in the UK certainly a lot of people are very keen to join us. All we can do is ignore the propaganda, endeavour to make sensible choices and hope for the best. The problem with major changes is the law of unitended consequences, rather tends to bite. No wonder religeon seems attractive to many.

 

Don

 

 

[Regularity]

10 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Nope, it's about accepting you're on a journey and along the way there will be a lot of challenges to overcome, how you approach these challenges is key to happiness.

Yes, I know, but many don't get that, and the way you originally phrased it suggested it was of the recently mentioned "thoughts and prayers" type of response.

(Which incidentally, is also supposed to be about focusing the mind on how to overcome challenges, not about, "Did some thinking, bye!")

[Skinnylinny]

1 hour ago, runs as required said:

Trying make amends for dragging CA back into politics again, and harking back to low bridges - here's a (early spring) Google streetviw pic showing evidence of repeated strikes at Langwathby station underbridge spanning Blindjack's turnpike (A696) descent from Hartside. I now see it to be a replacement girder, though I'd have sworn it was still an original S&C sandstone masonry arch.

 

 

I'm reminded of a bridge in the US which is locally known as the Canopener Bridge, which even has its own website: http://11foot8.com . As the address suggests, the bridge is 11'8", and it was argued could not be made higher by raising the railway (owing to level crossings nearby) or lowering the road (making the road too steep and insufficient space to allow long vehicles to level out. There's a height gauge, a big, tall-vehicle-triggered "OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN" sign, and the traffic lights at the junction ahead of it won't turn green if there's an overheight vehicle until several minutes have elapsed. There is video footage of over 150 collisions with the bridge, as someone's set up a webcam in an office window overlooking it.

 

I believe it's recently been raised to 12'4", and *still* something's collided with it.
 

 

[Annie]

'Thoughts and prayers' belongs with that other piece of meaningless American verbiage, 'Have a nice day'.  It implies friendly concern, but in the balance of things signifies nothing.

 

And I'm horrified at myself for entering into discussing politics.  When I found myself humming the 'Red Flag' to myself I had to give myself a good slapping.  I will be keeping a good eye on myself for the rest of the day to make sure I behave or else it will be the naughty corner for me and a good ticking off.

[Hroth]

Just now, Annie said:

When I found myself humming the 'Red Flag' to myself I had to give myself a good slapping. 

 

When I think of "The Red Flag", these words spring to mind.

 

"The Workers flag is deepest pink,

Its stained with spilt New Statesman ink...."

 

(c) Private Eye, probably. 

[Annie]

'The Worker's flag is palest pink.

Mum washed it in the kitchen sink.....'

 

There's endless parodies to choose from.

[nick_bastable]

Just to drag up Pyramids ( tenuous link )  excellent documentary on I-Player about Gertrude Bell   called Letters from Baghdad   some nice early film of Edwardian England and even a shot of  a Caly locomotive

 

Nick 

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Other adaptations of Buchan novels (Ok, The 39 Steps) have been drivel from the outset too!

 

 

Frankly, I can think of many worse fates than touring the Highlands handcuffed to Madeleine Carroll.

 

2 hours ago, Annie said:

When I found myself humming the 'Red Flag' to myself I had to give myself a good slapping.  

 

Priceless. 

 

(For everything else, there's a Magic Money Tree).

[nick_bastable]

18 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Frankly, I can think of many worse fates than touring the Highlands handcuffed to Madeleine Carroll.

no doubt inspired by this still 

 

 

Nick

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Frankly, I can think of many worse fates than touring the Highlands handcuffed to Madeleine Carroll.

 

 

Pity James Boswell, having to tag round with Samuel Johnson.

[wagonman]

4 hours ago, Annie said:

'Thoughts and prayers' belongs with that other piece of meaningless American verbiage, 'Have a nice day'.  It implies friendly concern, but in the balance of things signifies nothing.

 

And I'm horrified at myself for entering into discussing politics.  When I found myself humming the 'Red Flag' to myself I had to give myself a good slapping.  I will be keeping a good eye on myself for the rest of the day to make sure I behave or else it will be the naughty corner for me and a good ticking off.

 

Perhaps you'd prefer the Internationale?  :-)

 

 

[Annie]

14 minutes ago, wagonman said:

 

Perhaps you'd prefer the Internationale?  :-)

 

 

Too much like the days of my idealistic and best forgotten youth  Mr Wagonman.  

[wagonman]

11 minutes ago, Annie said:

Too much like the days of my idealistic and best forgotten youth  Mr Wagonman.  

 

Don't regret idealism! Especially the left wing variety...

[robmcg]

19 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

To which I might add that our Trumpeam PM has in recent times responded to all disasters both natural and man made by offering "thoughts and prayers" which I readily admit is the one utterance by any public figure that nearly drives me to contemplate assassination as an alternative to the ballot box. Thoughts and prayers? what's bloody wrong with actually doing something rather than mouthing bible belt platitudes?

 

I think that this demonstrates quite clearly that we who are citizens of the Western liberal democracies have allowed ourselves to become dangerously complacent.       

 

What?  So you are going to replace people who make such utterances with, let's see, 'People's Assemblies' ?

 

Before we know it we can have Leninist collectives...   might meet Annie there...   

 

Thoughts and Prayers are what Pelosi offers too....

 

It's NOT a conspiracy. It's a social-media inflamed dissertation of opinions  most commonly without facts and further enhanced by the need to belong to one silo or another...  thus we need to pray for what I like.  Property rights, mutual respect, and my own infallibility and desire to live comfortably .  

 

I did march against the Vietnam war, race large British motorbikes,  the Holy Grail was somewhere on the Isle of Man.  Me? Belong to a silo?  Yes!

 

 

 

 

But as Annie says,   don't get me started. 45 years paralysed in a wheelchair or on a bed , two comatose strokes and I can still do nice enough pictures of trains...

 

do the names Tony Jeffries, Barry Sheene, Mike Hailwood, Geoff Duke, mean anything to anyone here?      hello....??   

 

oh, sorry, wrong acid trip....

Edited December 6, 2019 by robmcg

[robmcg]

On the subject of madness, electoral, political, and in various other forms alluded to here, we included a bit which I in my confusion thought might have been about old trains, transport, and there were some pictures of sad buses.

 

Here is the type of bus I used to drive having left university in 1972...  two thirds of drivers then had trade or professional qualifications but prefered driving.

 

The just got rid of them a year ago...  the second pic shows what they scrapped. 

 

Back to trains after this, I just wanted to show people...

 

 

[Nearholmer]

They scrapped a trolley bus system, recently????

 

That would be recently as in “at the same time as the trolley system is being reinvented in Europe, and tested on a section of motorway as a possible means of  supplying power to goods vehicles”, would it?

 

Why???

 

Combined with batteries on the vehicles, for ‘off grid rambling’, it is without doubt a ‘coming technology’ (again).

 

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by Nearholmer

[robmcg]

Completely off topic, my apologies for the above.

 

Yes they scrapped the trolley buses a year ago, replaced with double deckers too tall to fit through some tunnels.  An overseas expert on urban transport had been engaged... 

 

Ah I see the new truck pic. Interesting. It'll never take off,  the numbers don't equal profit. Yet.

Edited December 6, 2019 by robmcg

[Nearholmer]

Not so sure: it was retro-tech by 1905. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote
 

Possibly not used in rural Norfolk at that time, I have to admit.

[robmcg]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

They scrapped a trolley bus system, recently????

 

That would be recently as in “at the same time as the trolley system is being reinvented in Europe, and tested on a section of motorway as a possible means of  supplying power to goods vehicles”, would it?

 

Why???

 

Combined with batteries on the vehicles, for ‘off grid rambling’, it is without doubt a ‘coming technology’ (again).

 

It really is rather sad.  Similar to stopping electric trains here in favour of diesel electric...  as Annie alluded to. sorry Annie I want your soap box!

 

Decisions made by people with degrees, too....  there were a lot in 1969-72 whom I trounced at exams at school who went on to become PhDs and Hons grads with extra gongs  and these run society?  Mind you I did become far too in love with whisky for some years, of which I am not proud.

 

Give me strength.   btw I greatly enjoy your wisdoms Nearholmer. 

[robmcg]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

Not so sure: it was retro-tech by 1905. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote
 

Possibly not used in rural Norfolk at that time, I have to admit.

 

Is mention of rural Norfolk allowed here?

[Compound2632]

Eco-bus. Also good for the roses:

 

 

NRM DY 1839, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

[robmcg]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

Eco-bus. Also good for the roses:

 

 

NRM DY 1839, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

 

Ah but how would it go in the wilds of Cornwall, in a raging storm?  Too dark even for smugglers... 

[Nearholmer]

If you ferret around on you tube, there are several videos of animal-powered dynamos, which are actually used in India to give some basic electrical supply to isolated villages, so it is possible to fertilise the flowers and have electricity!

 

If an ox gives a steady 1hp, that is probably enough to provide one electric lamp in each of about 75 houses, maybe 100 houses, given the efficiency of LED lamps.

[Andy Hayter]

11 minutes ago, robmcg said:

 

Ah but how would it go in the wilds of Cornwall, in a raging storm?  Too dark even for smugglers... 

 

Almost certainly a lot faster than in London, whose streets were full of horse drawn traffic, horse droppings and were being dug up to install new fangled services and in some cases the underground.  Average speeds then were around 8mph - 12 kph.  Not much different now.