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The Night Mail


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15 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

The same principle applies when you are using a helicopter for personnel transfer/ casevac from ships and boats. It can be quite fun when the (then) Sea King has been tasked to lift folk from a RIB doing just over 30 knots.

 

Going the other way we just jumped into the water and got the RIB to pick us up!

When we were on QM2 a helicopter had to fly out to pickup two people who had become unwell after leaving New York the day before. Our cabins were on deck 13 next to the place where the helicopter lowered whatever they lower to the deck. We had to vacate our rooms and go to a lounge 2 decks down for safety reasons. We couldn’t see anything as all the security blinds were down. We could certainly hear the helicopter though. 

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12 hours ago, SM42 said:

A friend of ours had to take an English language test to get her British passport 

Apparently she had not studied the right degree in the UK  to be exempt, despite the fact that she taught A Level standard Maths and Physics at an English FE college.

 

I am a little in awe of people who can do such things in a second  language.

 

Andy

 

Though Bear has had a few teachers in his time that must've been speaking gobbledy - cos I hadn't the faintest idea what they were on about....

Edited by polybear
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4 hours ago, laurenceb said:

From memory, Ray Hanna on a programme about the Red Arrows at least 26 years ago.

 

The problem with saying that changing a fuse affected the roll rate is that the main flight controls on the Gnat are mechanical-hydraulic and the only electrical input is to the tailplane trim motor. The teaching in the FTS groundschool was that the roll rate was limited for flying training purposes but the Yellowjacks and Red Arrows aircraft were unlimited - nothing secretive or dodging higher authority about it.  

 

Dave 

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2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I have mentioned before but possibly not in this thread that my son had his application to study for a Masters (MRes) degree in Sweden declined as his English Language qualification was inadequate. At that time he had a BA from Leicester and an MSc from the LSE so presumably had some grasp of his native tongue, in spite of a less than impressive GCSE pass. 

I had similar issues regarding working in EU countries. English was at the time, one of the EU's working languages and probably the most widely spoken language (German is also widely spoken to varying extents from the Baltic to the Danube, partly as a legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). 

 

However as I was told quite openly on a number of occasions, it was definitely not regarded as a "European language" and to meet the common requirement for "two European languages" I would need to be fluent in two other languages. 

 

Of course, I also have no real formal qualifications in English, my GCE Use of English being long obsolete.

 

This resulted on at least one occasion, in being rejected for a job in the UK, on a project where English was the official language.... 

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14 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

I had similar issues regarding working in EU countries. English was at the time, one of the EU's working languages and probably the most widely spoken language (German is also widely spoken to varying extents from the Baltic to the Danube, partly as a legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). 

 

However as I was told quite openly on a number of occasions, it was definitely not regarded as a "European language" and to meet the common requirement for "two European languages" I would need to be fluent in two other languages. 

 

Of course, I also have no real formal qualifications in English, my GCE Use of English being long obsolete.

 

This resulted on at least one occasion, in being rejected for a job in the UK, on a project where English was the official language.... 

 

Me thinks that your interviewer was looking at reducing the number of possible interviewees there or is that being too cynical.

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ATTENTION CAKE FANS ( ie all TNMers)

 

It's late October in Poznan.

 

A local delicacy that appears at this time of year is Rogale Marcinskie. 

A sort of poppy seed croissant

 

Needless to say these are very nice. Several have been eaten at SM42 Hall in the last week and more are on order. However  for tomorrow we have these

 

20211023_223632.jpg.6a931c3bf271dab3ad9151882d213130.jpg

 

Now these may look the genuine article, but in fact they are not.

 

Fake cakes?

 

These are Rogale Bydgoszcze.  A slightly smaller version.

Whilst identical in almost every way, the Marcinskie version is a protected recipe and has to be a certain weight. :rtfm:

 

Either way they are very tasty and can be found lurking in various  / every ( if you are quick enough) cakey outlet in Poznan and certainly not good for the waistline.

 

But who cares? :D

 

The amount available at any given outlet will slowly build up to mountain like proportions and Rogale stalls will pop up in shopping centres as we head towards St Marcin's day on 11th November 

 

I just wish I could stay till then.

 

Andy

Edited by SM42
Fat fingers. Well I have eaten a lot of Rogale
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Talking about language qualifications when I arrived in Hong Kong back in 1966 local policemen who spoke English wore a red flash behind their uniform number.

 

On the day of my arrival (working for a bank) I was signed up as a constable in the Marine Division of Hong Kong Auxiliary Police as we all had to do some form of social service and, as I had been a Special Constable in London, I was sent to the HKAP.

 

The interesting thing was that we were not allowed to wear the red flash behind our uniform number as we had not taken the Hong Kong Government English Examination.........

 

Keith

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4 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Many years ago I was a contract programmer at Astra Zeneca in Macclesfield. In order to get a deal on a piece of software (on an IBM mainframe) the dept manager arranged for a sales pitch and some training for another product from the same firm.

 

So two suits turned up for sales pitch,  and then the trainer walked in. Jeans, cowboy boots, waistcoat and pony tail.

 

Not what we expected.

 

However, the guy knew his stuff it turned out he'd only just returned from Germany, where he'd been giving the same training, in German. 

Astra Zeneca in Macclesfield, I’ve been there many times working in the gas station in the corner of the site that was close to the canal. We had to sit an induction course every 12 months, it was the same video every time, I got so used to it, that I knew the answers to all the questions, so I always got 100% score. 

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10 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

The problem with saying that changing a fuse affected the roll rate is that the main flight controls on the Gnat are mechanical-hydraulic and the only electrical input is to the tailplane trim motor. The teaching in the FTS groundschool was that the roll rate was limited for flying training purposes but the Yellowjacks and Red Arrows aircraft were unlimited - nothing secretive or dodging higher authority about it.  

 

Dave 

 

Bear has just pulled the fuse in the pc (well a nail works just as well) in the hope that it makes the bl00dy thing work a bit faster.  Should've been an IT Tech....

 

9 hours ago, rockershovel said:

This resulted on at least one occasion, in being rejected for a job in the UK, on a project where English was the official language.... 

 

HR strikes again......:angry:

 

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9 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

 

Me thinks that your interviewer was looking at reducing the number of possible interviewees there or is that being too cynical.

No, it's a consistent pattern which I've observed over time. 

 

There are various issues with education, professional registration, tax and benefits and pension arrangements. These are well known and there seems to be no will to address them. 

 

English speaking personnel are also commonly excluded from language classes run by employers, I find.

 

I remarked to my then-employers, a Dutch drilling company that I would happily have signed away all rights to live and work in Europe if I could have got entry to the US, Canada and Australia - or even just US and Canada. This wasn't entirely well received but my line manager, another much-travelled old hand simply nodded his head and agreed. 

Edited by rockershovel
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And there was mecthinking that we had enough problems within the U K. On my i itial trai ing coursecone of the class was from Ashington, up near Blyth. Even the Geordie instructors couldn't understand  him. I needed an interpreter at times to understand thecinstructors.

 

Jamie

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I was at a model railway exhibition with a pal and we were having a coffee in the cafe area when one of the chaps from a Liverpool MRC layout came and sat with us for a chat. He had the thickest Liverpudlian accent I think I've ever heard and when we left to go back to our own layout my pal asked, "What the hell was he talking about, I couldn't understand him." I replied that I couldn't help as I hadn't understood most of what he'd said either. "But you're from Liverpool," my pal protested, "You're supposed to understand him. What chance have the rest of us got?" I refrained from saying that since he had a fairly strong Brummy accent, the answer was probably nil.

 

Dave

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45 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

And there was mecthinking that we had enough problems within the U K. On my i itial trai ing coursecone of the class was from Ashington, up near Blyth. Even the Geordie instructors couldn't understand  him. I needed an interpreter at times to understand thecinstructors.

 

Jamie

Deb's paternal grandfather was the Pit Clerk at Ashington. Decades after his death, his widow still got free deliveries of coal....

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1 minute ago, Oldddudders said:

Deb's paternal grandfather was the Pit Clerk at Ashington. Decades after his death, his widow still got free deliveries of coal....

No pit now but a prison.  Such is progress.

 

Jamie

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When I was in the sixth form we were taken on various trips to see industries in action. One was to a Yorkshire coal mine (to my shame I can't remember which one) and actually went underground. Although what we experienced was interesting it also instilled in me, and I think all my classmates who were on the trip, the idea that to earn a living in such surroundings, given the choice, was probably the last thing that any of us would contemplate. I also got to know a chap from Lanarkshire who was a mine safety official and some of the things he told me about simply reinforced my view, so thank God I was never in the position of the unfortunate men who had little choice other than to go down the pit to earn a living. In some ways I think prison would be on a par with mining as a way of life.

 

Dave

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3 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

I was at a model railway exhibition with a pal and we were having a coffee in the cafe area when one of the chaps from a Liverpool MRC layout came and sat with us for a chat. He had the thickest Liverpudlian accent I think I've ever heard and when we left to go back to our own layout my pal asked, "What the hell was he talking about, I couldn't understand him." I replied that I couldn't help as I hadn't understood most of what he'd said either. "But you're from Liverpool," my pal protested, "You're supposed to understand him. What chance have the rest of us got?" I refrained from saying that since he had a fairly strong Brummy accent, the answer was probably nil.

 

Dave

 

Bear, whilst working on Trials in W. Wales was staying in the same hotel as the RN Aircrew; I was invited to dinner one evening and one of the Pilots mentioned that he was born & brought up in Birmingham.  I remarked that he didn't have a Brummy accent; he said that when he went to private school he had a choice - lose the accent PDQ or get the sh*t kicked out of him....

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4 minutes ago, dave55uk said:

My most common re-occuring dream is that I'm reversing while driving (usually a bus (I'm an ex-bus driver so that figures)) and the brakes won't work.

I just keep going slowly backwards. I've never hit anything yet though!

But do you have weeks of nothing and then three dreams come along at once?

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3 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

No pit now but a prison.  Such is progress.

 

Jamie

 

Isn't it a bit risky building a prison over all those ready made escape tunnels?

 

Andy

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The chat about different languages brings up a question in that do you think stomaches can talk to each other?

 

I ask be cause yesterday evening we were all in my mother's front parlour when my daughter's stomach gave a bit of a loud gurgle. Within a few moments all the stomachs were at it, so we assumed they were talking to each other,so we were talking in two languages simultaneously.

 

On retiring to the sleeping quarters, a tail twitching session was preceded by a third language entering the fray.

 

I concluded we are all multi lingual, bet just don't realise it.

Edited by Happy Hippo
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Just now, Happy Hippo said:

 

On retiring to the sleeping quarters, a tail twitching session was preceded by a third language entering the fray.

 

I concluded we are all multi lingual, bet just don't realise it.

 

I dread to think and am too scared to ask about the third language 

 

Andy

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