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Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905


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I ordered a book on railways in Somerset a short while ago and this morning I received an email from the bookseller to tell me that Somerset would be delivered to me today.  Wow! - the whole county and I got it for such a cheap price too.

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2 hours ago, Annie said:

I ordered a book on railways in Somerset a short while ago and this morning I received an email from the bookseller to tell me that Somerset would be delivered to me today.  Wow! - the whole county and I got it for such a cheap price too.

Lucky they didn't try to send Somerset  via the US postal service, I see you guys have joined us on their "we do not deliver to" list alongside some stans and other assorted trouble spots.

I guess the US postal boast about how the mail always gets through has some fine print attached

usps.jpg.5cc0590aa19cf3580ad5b885dabe1e40.jpg

 

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6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Lucky they didn't try to send Somerset  via the US postal service, I see you guys have joined us on their "we do not deliver to" list alongside some stans and other assorted trouble spots.

I guess the US postal boast about how the mail always gets through has some fine print attached

usps.jpg.5cc0590aa19cf3580ad5b885dabe1e40.jpg

 

 I guess the donkeys have finally died, then?

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3 hours ago, Annie said:

I don't want any nasty letters from the USA anyway.  They can't even spell their words properly.

No worries, youse can get your wizard to put a spell on them.

 

Oops, no you can't, cos he just got the flick...

 

"The official Wizard of New Zealand, perhaps the only state-appointed wizard in the world, has been cast from the public payroll, spelling the end to a 23-year legacy.

The Wizard, whose real name is Ian Brackenbury Channell, 88, had been contracted to Christchurch city council for the past two decades to promote the city through “acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services”, at a cost of $16,000 a year. He has been paid a total of $368,000.

The Wizard, who was born in England, began performing acts of wizardry and entertainment in public spaces shortly after arriving in New Zealand in 1976. When the council originally tried to stop him, the public protested. In 1982, the New Zealand Art Gallery Directors Association said he had become a living work of art, and then, in 1990, the prime minister at the time, Mike Moore, asked that he consider becoming the Wizard of New Zealand.

He has performed in Christchurch, rain-danced in New Zealand and Australia during droughts, and was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours. But he has also encountered controversy with off-colour comments about women."

 

 

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20 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Oops, no you can't, cos he just got the flick...

Apparently he is no longer a good fit for the corporate image the Christchurch council wants to portray to the world.  As if anybody cares a fig about corporate image during the Years of the Plague unless they happen to be airhead latte sipping trendy w@nkers that is.

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3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:


He clearly knows the spell for parting the gullible from money..

 

How much value does society put on someone who is an entertainer? Some, seem to be enormously esteemed in their roles as minstrels and jesters.

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40 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Don't beat about the bush, Annie.....the mods don't like us saying things as they are....

 

Over one swear word? Not even a particularly strong one at that. Though probably treated as more so, and thus if used, more likely to get you into a pub fight in the UK, rather than in antipodean climes.

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15 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

Over one swear word? Not even a particularly strong one at that. Though probably treated as more so, and thus if used, more likely to get you into a pub fight in the UK, rather than in antipodean climes.

 The swear word, i was ignoring...it 's the very descriptive [and appropriate in my view] rest of it...so very apt, yet deemed potentially so very...erm.....offensive, to some? [if the cap fits, doesn't help matters in this day & age, does it?}   Aren't we supposed to be inclusive these days?  Or have I got that wrong as well?

 

Speaking as a GoG!  {Enhanced spell check refused to cite 'speaking', instead coming up with ''Spa, Spanking, and Sip!!  Eeeee,  I wonder where they got the spell checker from??]

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19 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 The swear word, i was ignoring...it 's the very descriptive [and appropriate in my view] rest of it...so very apt, yet deemed potentially so very...erm.....offensive, to some? [if the cap fits, doesn't help matters in this day & age, does it?}   Aren't we supposed to be inclusive these days?  Or have I got that wrong as well?

 

Speaking as a GoG!  {Enhanced spell check refused to cite 'speaking', instead coming up with ''Spa, Spanking, and Sip!!  Eeeee,  I wonder where they got the spell checker from??]

 

I've been In and out of various rabbit holes trying to find the root to the difficulty.

 

Discovered one thing,  'Airhead' being a gender-neutral term, means that Annie can not be accused of being misogynistic. 

 

I will reluctantly have to bow to your superior knowledge in this matter, you being a Guardian of the Galaxy and all.

 

 

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20 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

I've been In and out of various rabbit holes trying to find the root to the difficulty.

 

Discovered one thing,  'Airhead' being a gender-neutral term, means that Annie can not be accused of being misogynistic. 

 

I will reluctantly have to bow to your superior knowledge in this matter, you being a Guardian of the Galaxy and all.

 

 

 It was the ''latte-sippin' bit that I think the mods might have taken a fence or two over?

I don't read Guardians, and am off Galaxy for now.....

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God I feel rough. Tuesday, for me, marked the first day of what feels like recuperation, rather than illness, and it's been uphill all the way since.  I do hope that I will soon feel fully well.  I still have the chronic shortness of breath that I've had for many weeks now, but I do feel that if only I can remain free of bugs, armed as I am with inhalers, I can slowly but surely exercise my way back to reasonable health. I remain staggered by the effect a simple cold can have on me! 

 

We in the UK seem to be consolidating our relatively recent trend for murdering our members of parliament. Apart from the fact that each such case is a personal tragedy, it cannot be good for a democracy to fall into the habit of killing off elected representatives. It is very sad on many levels. 

 

But what of Christchurch? It was, surely, to the credit of that fine city that it had a Wizard on the payroll. If the current burghers of Christchurch think that a Corporation Wizard is beneath their dignity, they are surely tragically and absurdly wrong?

 

They would do well to remember the cautionary admonition "do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are right grumpy b*ggers if you get the wrong side of them!"

 

 

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3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

But what of Christchurch? It was, surely, to the credit of that fine city that it had a Wizard on the payroll. If the current burghers of Christchurch think that a Corporation Wizard is beneath their dignity, they are surely tragically and absurdly wrong?

 

And that is what is so terribly wrong about the council's decision.  It's a conclusion made by shallow minded folk with little imagination who have no doubt taken cheap rate American correspondence courses in accountancy and marketing. 

I had the good fortunate to live in Christchurch before much of its historic beauty was destroyed by a series of earthquakes and now that the city is being rebuilt it's plain that those in charge are  wanting to beat to death any remaining trace of what the city used to be.  No doubt by the time they've finished the city will be just as bland and unrecognisable as any other 'modern' city one might find elsewhere on the planet.

 

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

God I feel rough. Tuesday, for me, marked the first day of what feels like recuperation, rather than illness, and it's been uphill all the way since.  I do hope that I will soon feel fully well.  I still have the chronic shortness of breath that I've had for many weeks now, but I do feel that if only I can remain free of bugs, armed as I am with inhalers, I can slowly but surely exercise my way back to reasonable health. I remain staggered by the effect a simple cold can have on me! 

 

Good to read that you are recovering James and may the gradient on your uphill climb back to good health be eased with every step.

Edited by Annie
Um.........
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4 hours ago, Edwardian said:

We in the UK seem to be consolidating our relatively recent trend for murdering our members of parliament. Apart from the fact that each such case is a personal tragedy, it cannot be good for a democracy to fall into the habit of killing off elected representatives. It is very sad on many levels. 

What the heck!  I've just read about this on our Radio New Zealand website and I'm shocked.  What a horrible thing to have happened.

More than likely we all have been guilty of wishing dire things upon our political leaders, but definitely not going out and stabbing them to death.

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2 hours ago, Annie said:

Christchurch before much of its historic beauty was destroyed by a series of earthquakes and now that the city is being rebuilt it's plain that those in charge are  wanting to beat to death any remaining trace of what the city used to be. 

The town “planners” had started on Coventry well before WW2: the Luftwaffe didn’t destroy the old medieval city, just helped hasten its demise.

Philistinism is nothing new.

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I think the pre-WW2 and immediately post-WW2 planners deserve a break, in that they genuinely, deeply thought they were doing the right thing, even if history has demonstrated that in some cases they got things badly wrong. Move forward in time, and I think that “you really should have known better” rings ever louder through the 1960s, 70s, and beyond in far too many cases.

 

But they didn’t get it all wrong. I live in England’s biggest planned utopia, and although it isn’t utopia, it is very good indeed in most ‘planable’ respects - the planners of this utopia did at least learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

 

Edwardian - very best of luck with your return to full health. I mentioned that everyone here had copped the hefty cold too: MiL has suffered like you, for twice or three times as long as any of the rest of us. It clearly victimises a random selection of those who catch it.

 

Kevin

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16 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I think the pre-WW2 and immediately post-WW2 planners deserve a break, in that they genuinely, deeply thought they were doing the right thing, even if history has demonstrated that in some cases they got things badly wrong. Move forward in time, and I think that “you really should have known better” rings ever louder through the 1960s, 70s, and beyond in far too many cases.

 

My father (b. 1939) maintained that tower blocks were the right thing to build at the time. Those who condemn them out of hand give no thought to the slums they replaced. There wasn't much money around for anything else, anyway.

 

What I (b. 1964) find no excuse for are the rabbit-hutch developments of the 1980s onwards, with so-called 4-bedroom detached houses crammed on tiny plots. They lack the cosy energy efficiency of the party wall and were always about developers' profits and inhabitants' snobbery rather than good planning.

Edited by Compound2632
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Reflecting on the continued lock-down of Auckland (New Zealand's, not Bishop's!!), it strikes me again on how a high level of vaccination really is the only way through this; no one will keep the Delta variant at bay indefinitely. What you need to do is vaccinate almost all your population, then your challenge is reduced to keeping Delta in check for long enough to do so.

 

So, here in the UK, Covid-19 has now ripped through the population, but not until we'd vaccinated. Infection rates are several orders of magnitude greater than during the worse of the crisis. While I have concerns about the clinically vulnerable and I do deplore making mask-wearing in certain places voluntary too soon, on the whole, things have worked out.

 

We are all being laid low by the Cold from Hell, but that, however unpleasant and debilitating, does not appear to be killing us. 

 

This cold saw Miss T and I poleaxed, with Miss T spending 10 days in bed and off school. Son and Heir had a rough week and a couple of days off.  The Memsahib, who generally believes that illness is the result of a culpable Lack of Moral Fibre, confessed to spending 4 days in bed with it last week. 

 

The Memsahib was shocked at how bad I was when she called round with supplies of nourishing soup  - my levels of grim satisfaction at finally having contracted something accepted as more than Man 'Flu can hardly be imagined - so, when Son and Heir tested positive for Covid, the decision was taken that the kids would remain with her for the meanwhile, so as not to increase my viral loading. Covid-19, when it finally caught up with my son, robbed him of his sense of taste.  Otherwise it's left him alone; the cold of the previous week being far worse. The boredom of isolating is his only complaint this week.  The Memsahib has now also tested positive, but also appears symptom free. 

 

So, get a vaccinated population and, by and large, you can happily go round catching Covid, it seems.

 

Watch out for colds though!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Replying to Compound’s point:

 

Ah, yes! 
 

Where our planned utopia crumbles at the edges is where the writ of the peculiarly Stalinist-Thatcherite body that was the original development corporation ran out. The DC was really odd - no democratic accountability at all, but did a fantastic job.


After it ceased to exist, ordinary planning rules applied, and although our council inherited from the DC a real skill in using Section 106 provisions, so schools, surgeries etc match population, p*ss-poor design of street layouts, and “crammed in” commercial developer style arrangements, became far more common.

 

To create a planned utopia actually needs a benevolent dictatorship, rather than near-anarchy. The least utopian, most dystopian urbanisation that I’ve seen wasn’t DDR bunker-blocks, horrible as they are, but in parts of Ibiza, where anarchic sprawl has destroyed the environment and even bare-basic provision like actual road surfaces, and pavements that are continuous and usable don’t exist - the place is a solid demonstration of the need for well-enforced planning laws.

Edited by Nearholmer
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Living in the badlands of the Marches, all planning decisions are made to suit the purveyors of  expensive identikit houses such as  B*rd*r O*k and their competitors , all of whom churn out the same factory produced vaguely scandimodern wooden houses for baby boomer retirees. The current batch are being built down the road from our place on what was previously stables and waterlogged rough pasture prone to flooding...

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On 16/10/2021 at 08:10, Compound2632 said:

 

My father (b. 1939) maintained that tower blocks were the right thing to build at the time. Those who condemn them out of hand give no thought to the slums they replaced. There wasn't much money around for anything else, anyway.

 

 

The first tenants in the new tower blocks loved their homes; the down side was the concomitant destruction of the old communities during the slum clearance process. Then came the lack of on-going care and maintenance for the new tower blocks and pretty soon they became the new slums – with added isolation when the lifts weren't working. Then came Ronan Point...

 

 

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