The Night Mail

[simontaylor484]

6 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

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.

Stuff disappearing from sites on lorries is quite common. People just see it as normal activity and carry on regardless.

[polybear]

8 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

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.

 

The best one recently was the theft from Plymouth Naval Base of a £250K's worth of diesel destined for HMS Ocean; by all accounts it had been going on for weeks and was only detected when a civvy security guard did a spot check on a tanker leaving the base. 

[newbryford]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

 

 

• Viewing naughty stuff on company PC's -

 

 

 

 

I did hear of a similar offence, but the reason for the dismissal was because he didn't show it to everyone else in the office.......

[newbryford]

Meanwhile:

 

 

 

My body writhed and quivered from the pain.

 

I had learned my next lesson.

 

Never again would I leave an upturned plug on the shed floor

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, pH said:

 

and Jamie’s response:

 

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

Check which reply younare quoting first.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

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

We had a force energy efficieny officer who got an award from British Gas for saving on energy consumption in force buildings.  He was seen sneaking around at night turning thermostats down.  He then got arrested for fiddling his own domestic gas bill. This was about the same ti e that the force Psychologist was fou d to have faked his qualifications.

 

Jamie

[J. S. Bach]

16 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

 ...snip... the force Psychologist was found to have faked his qualifications.

Jamie

The IT director where I worked was found to have faked his college credentials so got fired. The unfortunate part of that was that he really did know his stuff and his replacement did not.

[newbryford]

A diversion or three from the desk/workbench today.

 

First up, some dirty horrible smoky thing (46100 Royal Scot on 1Z19 Crewe-Carlisle)

 

 

Then one of GBRf's many celebrity locos - "The Flying Dustman" on an Arcow-Pendleton stone train.

 

 

Followed by one of the most modellable trains on the network at present, 37418 pushing the inspection saloon "Caroline".

 

 

 

 

[AndyID]

There's trooble down't mill.

 

The neighbor who volunteered to take over as president of our little community water association last year showed up on our doorstep at 8 am (I was still in bed) to inform me he was quitting effectively now 😀

 

Then another neighbor, the lady who was the treasurer announced by email she was chucking it too!

 

(There was a bit of a contretemps regarding irrigation concerning the owners of a newly built home but IMHO they were being bombarded by a lot of officious BS. They even offered to pay for the installation of water meters for the entire community and they are bringing in water in a road tanker for irrigation, so the whole episode was just silly.)

 

So it's just little old me running the whole shooting match. I'm about ready to employ a service to run the system. It will be interesting to hear the howls of complaint about how much it will cost 😀

[Sasquatch]

One of the biggest scams I heard of was the story about a well-known high St. chain store in Brighton. The store was losing money hand over fist. The auditors were called in from head office and came up with a blank. Detectives and spies were employed who also found nothing. No shop lifting to speak of, the books all added up at the end of each day and the staff closely monitored.

In the end a private super sleuth was called in and spotted it in ten minutes. 7 tills in the shop and only 6 on the books!

 

The worst act of moral turpitude was the guy smoking at work, in a furniture factory I should add, who tossed his butt into the extraction system as the manager walked around the corner. Of course, it caught on fire and one emergency worker got severely injured. We all knew who it was, but he still didn't lose his job.    

 

And Hippo mate. For heaven's sake stop eating lions, you'll get an ulcer or something.

I take it that was your mane course. Hat Coat etc.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Sasquatch

[iL Dottore]

9 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

The IT director where I worked was found to have faked his college credentials so got fired. The unfortunate part of that was that he really did know his stuff and his replacement did not.

I think this sort of thing is almost inevitable as companies require more and more paper qualifications – even though “hands on experience and knowledge“ is far, far better than the paper qualifications they are replaced by.

 

Quite frankly, I think it was a foolish idea to push for 50% of school leavers to go into higher education (i.e. university). At very best, you have a surplus of graduates in certain disciplines and at worst you have such a dilution of standards that the resulting qualifications are all but meaningless (or even both). Far better, I would argue, are those systems which provide skilled apprenticeships and non-academic technical education as well as an academic university system.

 

I would also argue that in many professions, “fast track advancement“ for university graduates is probably not a very good idea. Especially for emergency services like the police. Someone may have written a brilliant treatise on “ Mass Murderers in Greater Manchester“ but that sort of criminological insight does not replace the knowledge and experience you get from breaking up pub fights, attending RTAs and general coppering.

[Winslow Boy]

That treatise would have to on gang warfare rather than mass murder.

[Happy Hippo]

I suspect I might be suffering from a touch of Long Covid.

 

It's affecting my concentration levels!

 

I can go out to the garage and start some scenic work, then after about 10 minutes decide I need to mock up yet another micro layout.  So space is cleared, templates and stock plonked down to get a feel for things, then realisation strikes:  I should be doing the scenery.

 

So I return to doing scenic work, only to realise that I'm not doing the stuff I was working on before my short planning diversion, but something completely different.🤣

 

As a result nothing seems to be getting done apart from creating even more mess and clutter than is usual for my modelling chaos.

 

I think it might be a good idea to put absolutely everything away and then restart with a clean slate.

 

 

[PhilJ W]

4 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

I suspect I might be suffering from a touch of Long Covid.

 

It's affecting my concentration levels!

 

I can go out to the garage and start some scenic work, then after about 10 minutes decide I need to mock up yet another micro layout.  So space is cleared, templates and stock plonked down to get a feel for things, then realisation strikes:  I should be doing the scenery.

 

So I return to doing scenic work, only to realise that I'm not doing the stuff I was working on before my short planning diversion, but something completely different.🤣

 

As a result nothing seems to be getting done apart from creating even more mess and clutter than is usual for my modelling chaos.

 

I think it might be a good idea to put absolutely everything away and then restart with a clean slate.

 

 

Your not alone.

[Tony_S]

55 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

restart with a clean slate.

A North Wales narrow gauge micro layout perhaps?

[Happy Hippo]

22 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

A North Wales narrow gauge micro layout perhaps?

In 7/8" to the foot🤣.

 

Wrekin Havock was 14' x 12' which roughly converted down was the equivilent of a 4 mm 3' x 2' Rabbit Warren.

 

I have plenty of stock and track, I just need to finish off clearing the new site behind the garage for this project.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Happy Hippo

[J. S. Bach]

As I was concerned about Douglass (Florence Locomotive Works), I sent him a PM and got this response:

 

"Fear not Dave, I’m doing very well, just incredibly busy at the moment. I’ll be returning soon I hope."

 

That is good to hear. BTW, PM to me posted with his permission.

[jjb1970]

As a young fellow I was warned about the evils of beer goggles by my thermodynamics lecturer at South Tyneside College. As he so wisely observed - you go to bed with a super model and wake up to next to something that looks like the wife. And if it is a super model she had a lot more to drink than you did. You probably don't get lifetime learning and wisdom like that in today's education system.

[SM42]

Mrs SM42 has just made coffee and opened a box of chocolates BBE June, so they need eating. 

 

" you can have 5"

 

So I counted them out,

 

" 1, 2  3 ,4 ,4 ,5 "

 

She did have a bit of a furrowed brow, but I got away with it.

 

Andy

 

Breaking news: She's just added another on my plate. 

Today keeps on getting better 

[simontaylor484]

We have a chocolate cake in the fridge 3 weeks out of date none of the others in the house dare eat it. I would sample but type 2 and that 

[PhilJ W]

21 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

We have a chocolate cake in the fridge 3 weeks out of date none of the others in the house dare eat it. I would sample but type 2 and that 

I turned my fridge up to maximum cold during the heatwave and forgot about it. Some stuff at the back was well out of date but it needed defrosting. I did eat it with no ill effects.

[jamie92208]

33 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

We have a chocolate cake in the fridge 3 weeks out of date none of the others in the house dare eat it. I would sample but type 2 and that 

I would offer to help but I'm a bit far away. If I was near y I know a 3yr old who would help as well.

 

Jamie

[br2975]

17 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

We had a force energy efficieny officer who got an award from British Gas for saving on energy consumption in force buildings.  He was seen sneaking around at night turning thermostats down.  He then got arrested for fiddling his own domestic gas bill. This was about the same ti e that the force Psychologist was fou d to have faked his qualifications.

 

.

And there was I thinking SWP were the only force to employ such 'characters'

[Happy Hippo]

15 minutes ago, br2975 said:

.

And there was I thinking SWP were the only force to employ such 'characters'

They employed you!🤣

[Sasquatch]

7 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I suspect I might be suffering from a touch of Long Covid.

 

It's affecting my concentration levels!

 

I can go out to the garage and start some scenic work, then after about 10 minutes decide I need to mock up yet another micro layout.  So space is cleared, templates and stock plonked down to get a feel for things, then realisation strikes:  I should be doing the scenery.

 

So I return to doing scenic work, only to realise that I'm not doing the stuff I was working on before my short planning diversion, but something completely different.🤣

 

As a result nothing seems to be getting done apart from creating even more mess and clutter than is usual for my modelling chaos.

 

I think it might be a good idea to put absolutely everything away and then restart with a clean slate.

 

 

All sounds pretty familiar and I've escaped infection. I think you'll find it's called AAADD.