The Night Mail

[Oldddudders]

27 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

At least his chair is appropriately equipped.

Not so good for a wine-glass.

[SM42]

28 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Not so good for a wine-glass.

 

Not if you drink it by the pint

 

Andy

[petethemole]

The TV needs to be hung on the wall at seated eye level, otherwise long term viewing will be uncomfortable.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

Not so good for a wine-glass.

 

Not if you drink it by the pint

I think I’d prefer a well-filled hour-glass figure offerring a well-filled pint-glass 🤣

[iL Dottore]

43 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

…a well-filled hour-glass figure offering a well-filled pint-glass 🤣

Is that what they call “moral turpitude“?

 

Just asking for a friend…

[Happy Hippo]

2 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

I think I’d prefer a well-filled hour-glass figure offerring a well-filled pint-glass 🤣

Like this?

 

 

Or for those that prefer more mature conversation:

 

[Dave Hunt]

30 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Like this?

 

 

What glass?

 

Dave

[simontaylor484]

The top photo shows what you go home with after drinking several of those large pitchers of beer.

The bottom photo is what she looks like when the beer goggles come off

[pH]

9 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Oooh! Do tell!

I’d love to know what they considered “gross moral turpitude“ so that I can a) avoid it or b) embrace it if appropriate….

I left that job over 46 years ago, so the details are long gone. However the general themes were drunkenness, debauchery, violence and financial malpractice (So, National Pastimes, as you say).

 

[Dave Hunt]

6 minutes ago, pH said:

I left that job over 46 years ago, so the details are long gone. However the general themes were drunkenness, debauchery, violence and financial malpractice (So, National Pastimes, as you say).

 

 

So quietly poisoning someone while sober, solvent and with your trousers on wouldn’t be grounds for dismissal?

 

Dave

[Winslow Boy]

1 minute ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

So quietly poisoning someone while sober, solvent and with your trousers on wouldn’t be grounds for dismissal?

 

Dave

 

All depends if it was on company time and on company premises. Otherwise no.

[pH]

11 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

So quietly poisoning someone while sober, solvent and with your trousers on wouldn’t be grounds for dismissal?

 

Dave

Don’t know - never tried.

[Happy Hippo]

So tipping the entire board of directors into an acid bath could just be seen as dissolving the company?

Edited August 24, 2022 by Happy Hippo

[iL Dottore]

12 minutes ago, pH said:

…were drunkenness, debauchery…

I am assuming that this was an American company.
 

It’s  almost a patriotic duty for an Englishman (not to mention a Welshman, a Scotsman or an Irishman) to dedicate at least part of their life to drunkenness and debauchery (preferably between the ages of 18 and 30 – as you can bounce back from almost anything at that age)

[pH]

3 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I am assuming that this was an American company.
 

It’s  almost a patriotic duty for an Englishman (not to mention a Welshman, a Scotsman or an Irishman) to dedicate at least part of their life to drunkenness and debauchery (preferably between the ages of 18 and 30 – as you can bounce back from almost anything at that age)

No, actually - part of a very British organization. I will say no more.

[jamie92208]

10 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Every time my Eurostar flashes across the Medway I look towards Rochester and think of Shorts and the flying boats tested on that stretch of river. A road called Shorts Way commemorates the past. 

I thought that a double mattress and a fridge were the two essentials.

 

Jamie

Edited August 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[polybear]

49 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

So quietly poisoning someone while sober, solvent and with your trousers on wouldn’t be grounds for dismissal?

 

Dave

 

There have been several over the years at The House of Fun, for crimes such as:

 

• Fiddlin' Expenses (rumour has it that one manager was submitting dual expenses - including Club Class return airfares to the States) to two separate Bosses) 
• Too many private phone calls - though they were to Hong Kong and he ran up a bill of something like £50K over something like a 6 month period.  He even came back on site whilst suspended to use the phone...
• A security guard was caught being very naughty with a young lady commonly referred to as "T*tsolina" on a conference room table one sunday morning.  He was shown the door, she survived....
• Pinchin' stuff (the word is that a certain Chief Inspector of Security went that way)
• Voluntarily bangin' nails thru' rather delicate parts of the male anatomy (I kid you not) - that little episode made the Nationals, and one guy did jail time cos' one of the participants was under 21.
• "The Great Silver Solder Swindle" - purchasing & stores guys were buying in oodles of the stuff, dumping it in a skip and "tipping the wink" to the skip driver, who was also in on it.  About £40K IIRC; their downfall was the purchasing guy got voluntary early retirement and didn't delete the auto-purchase off the computer system.
• Viewing naughty stuff on company PC's - one guy had a company laptop that he used when working away from site (which was most of the time) and used to view various er, "artistic" websites in the evenings at the Hotel. When he went back on main site and hooked up the laptop the IT system said "Right then, let's see what he's been looking at".  That was his lot - out the door.

10/10 for creativity has to go to whoever left a "steamer" INSIDE one of the photocopiers - as the morning went on (and the photocopier warmed up thru' usage) the people in the office started noticing "a smell" 🤣  As far as I know they were never identified.

 

 

Edited August 24, 2022 by polybear

[pH]

8 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Every time my Eurostar flashes across the Medway I look towards Rochester and think of Shorts and the flying boats tested on that stretch of river. A road called Shorts Way commemorates the past. 

 

and Jamie’s response:

 

51 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I thought that a double mattress and a fridge were thectwo essentials.

 

Jamie

That’s an interesting non-sequitur (or am I missing something?)

Edited August 24, 2022 by pH

[simontaylor484]

There was a scam a few years ago involving a dodgy transport company and a "tame" security guard at Avesta Sheffield on nights . The truck would go on the weigh bridge inbound take the scrap for a little ride around the site out the car gates and a fake tare weigh entered on the system. This would happen a few  of times a night Avesta would pay for x loads of scrap inbound. It was finally rumbled when the night guard went off sick.

[simontaylor484]

There was an alleged caper at the Council a few years ago where they would be picking furniture up from the streets and then selling them to a 2nd hand shop

[J. S. Bach]

2 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

The top photo shows what you go home with after drinking several of those large pitchers of beer.

The bottom photo is what she looks like when the beer goggles come off

 

[Dave Hunt]

About the best scam I think I've heard of concerned one of the RAF bases that was built in Germany in the 1950s. When it was decided to fit arrester cables on the runway in the 1970s they were made in the UK to fit the contract drawings but when it came to fitting them they were found to be wider by about a metre than the runway actually was. A few rats were smelled and the rest of the station measured up whereupon it was found that virtually everything was undersized - the roads were slightly narrower than they were supposed to be, most of the buildings had at least one dimension undersize, the capacity of emergency water tanks was a bit less than specification etc. etc. When it was worked out how much the contractor had saved in materials it added up to a colossal sum and eventually both he and the MPBW ( Ministry of Public Building and Works) inspector plus a few other miscreants ended up looking at the world through bars.

 

Dave

Edited August 24, 2022 by Dave Hunt

[AndyID]

While you lot have been sloshing about in turpentine some of us have been busy 😀

 

The adapter I bought for the camera puts the camera's focal plane too far from the big reflector telescope's body. It accepts two inch diameter eyepieces. I could not find anything suitable to purchase which gave me a good excuse to use some machine tools.

 

 

It seems to solve the problem but I've only been able to test it photographing some nearby trees. The holes in the extension tube serve no useful purpose. The just happened to be in the piece of aluminium from the scrap box.

[polybear]

24 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

When it was decided to fit arrester cables on the runway in the 1970s they were made in the UK....

 

When the old site was being shut down all Ministry-owned equipment had to be returned; one of the things my Boss had on his charge was all the Arrester Gear at the end of the runway.

When he paid it back into the MoD stores he told them where it was - and they'd have to collect it themselves.  On his way out he said something along the lines of:

"Oh yes, and the arrester mechanism is buried 30ft down and encased in concrete....good luck....."

We suspect that much of it is still there.

[Northmoor]

A colleague of mine was involved in managing the closure, transfer and clearance of the engineering facilities at a sister site about half an hour away.  He would drop into see us at usual office to keep us up to date with the stories.

 

As this was an ex-military research site, there was still some interesting stuff around.  The MoD police had to get the Mk1 Challenger tank (used for various static trials) removed from the disposal list as the gunnery sight was still very much classified......  More amusingly was the fire engine that left the site on the back of a low loader with seemingly no paperwork to trace the purchaser or even the registration of the lorry it left on.