Early Risers.

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

I really enjoyed ExpoEM on Sunday and will know in a few days if it was worth it.

 

Several people on the ExpoEM Exhibition thread have reported  some form of lurgy (not necessarily C-19) after attending.

 

Bear here.....

A day of general "stuff" - nothing exciting but needed doing, so Tick is awarded.  Harry the H never appeared for his din dins last night - maybe he fancied a curry instead?

[NGT6 1315]

Cheers all. Will be getting Annika to bed in a few but just in case you might have been looking for some inspiration for a weekend modelling project… 🤣

 

 

[southern42]

9 hours ago, grandadbob said:

Good morning all,

Plenty of rain last night with lots of lightning and a few rumbles of thunder but mainly in the distance.

Several shades of grey in the sky at the moment with the chance of some showers but there should be some sunny spells later on.

It's a 3 bin lorry day today but the first one is running late.  Sainsbury's have surprised us by declaring that we will receive everything we ordered with no subs.  I can hardly contain myself.

A walk is scheduled with The Boss provided her knees (and mine) feel up to the task. 

After yesterday's excursion to The Shed I may try and repeat the trip as I actually derived some enjoyment from it. Thank you for the support and encouragement in that.  Thoughts of ripping it all out have been banished.  That would be a stupid waste of not only the time already spent but a considerable amount of tokens.  Thanks Flavio for the comments about how tidy it is, that is the only way I can work and my little Vax vacuum cleaner is always plugged in and used during and at the end of each session.  I do the same when doing any DIY and although it may take me longer I think it's a lot easier in the long run. Helps keep all the models clean too. 

Time to take tea up to Herself.

Have a good one,

Bob.

 

Nice surprise from Tess Coe’s, too - we had no subs or unavailables as well. Smaller order this week. Shame the price wasn’t smaller though! But there were cleaning materials on the list so not unexpected!

 

Glad you made it to the Shed, Bob! It missed you, I bet!

[TheQ]

I've generally got a cold after every show I've attended, I suspect with so few going out over the last few years they are more susceptible to picking up the latest variety..

 

The norfolk and Norwich festival is on, originally held to support the local free hospital..

That was in 1772, its been held most years ever since..

 

My muddling mojo was definitely in short supply last Friday planting seaweed, I'll be doing more tomorrow, luckily it will be abbreviated by our quarterly meeting, then we will find out whether a show venue has been found..

[tigerburnie]

18 hours ago, andyram said:

Evening all and generic good wishes. It has been a skim read through ER’s today. Things have been very busy despite the day being one where the shop is closed. Part of the day has been spent dealing with the ineptness that is DPD.

 

 Last Friday I was due a delivery from Peco. DPD were due to deliver between 12.45 and 1.45. The arriving soon alert was received just before 2pm. With the shop being sadly quiet, I wandered out to the end of the alleyway to await the delivery whilst enjoying the sun. Ten minutes later I observed the van drive straight through Matlock Bath without stopping or making any attempt to stop. This was followed by the “driver could not locate you” message (he did not try!)

 

Subsequent calls to DPD failed to get the parcel delivered and I was promised it would be sent Sunday. I arrived at the shop on Sunday and then received a message stating that due to a problem the parcel had not left the depot and would be redelivered Monday.

 

Further phone calls resulted in the delivery being rescheduled to Tuesday due to the fact I am closed on Monday. This time the delivery was made before the shop was open and the driver saw fit to leave the parcel on the doorstep and depart. One of my customers discovered it before my parents had arrived for the day!

 

Sadly this is not the first time it had happened. Three previous Peco deliveries have been dumped on the doorstep on mornings prior to the shop opening. Fortunately they have still been there when I arrived a short time later. I was less lucky with a Hornby parcel just before Easter. This was similarly left and one of the boxes had disappeared before I arrived.

 

All of the previous deliveries were made despite me using the App to request a change of delivery date and receiving an email confirming the request. These requests clearly being ignored.

 

What are DPD doing about this? Nothing! It has taken me since Friday to get to speak to the depot manager. A complete waste of time he turned out!

 

Stay safe.

 

 

Andy

I might ask Peco to use a different delivery company as a first port of call.(and any other company like Hornby too)

[polybear]

2 hours ago, andyram said:

This will mean I will be facing a tab of about £500 in refunds. Nothing Hornby can do and, seemingly, nothing DPD are prepared to do either. The whole thing stinks a little.

 

 

I wonder what DPD's reaction would be to a Small Claims Court Summons (I believe the whole process is done on-line now) - there's a fair chance they'd pay up "as a gesture of goodwill and without admission of liability blah blah blah and all that b0llox" cos' getting their legal dept. to defend it would cost more than it's worth.  I wonder if there's actually any proof the parcel was delivered?  Thinking purely hypothetically  of course - there's also the possibility that the driver or his buddy came back a couple of minutes later (it wouldn't take Sherlock Homes to guess the sort of items that could be in the parcel - especially if it's marked with the sender).

 

When Bear uses a Courier to send an ebay sale I'm very careful with the description of the contents (if the courier asks for it) - without actually mis-describing it in case of damage or loss; a loco will be listed as a Toy, for example.

 

In other news....

Bear sees that the winners of the £184M have "come out";  that's the very last thing I'd do - they'll have to spend the rest of their lives with eyes in the back of their heads.

 

And finally....

Bear is somewhat shocked at the news of an MI5 nutcase being protected by the courts such that the BBC can't name him.  Not good.

edit:  Here's the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61508520

Edited May 19, 2022 by polybear

[New Haven Neil]

Quote Investigator:  While it may be apocryphal, Winston Churchill is often quoted as having said (supposedly paraphrasing Orwell) “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

 

Shan't say any more.

[simontaylor484]

@andyram the situation stinks more than a little all this leaving parcels without signatures is wrong 

[simontaylor484]

If I was the lottery winner (no way that I would have gone public) I would be installing a wood burning stove and would keep my house warm for free burning begging letters 

[tigerburnie]

2 hours ago, andyram said:

Afternoon all and I hope you are all well. The sun is out and it has been lovely and warm in Matlock Bath today. A few tourists have been around but things have been rather quiet. 

 

I have kept myself busy unpacking the large Bachmann delivery which arrived on Tuesday. Some of the contents are for customer pre-orders so these will be packed and sent out over the course of the weekend.

 

To add further to the DPD saga. The parcel that was stolen was from Hornby. To be fair to them they have been very supportive and have sent me goods of equal value as a replacement. Sadly, some of the missing items are also for customer pre-orders and these are so sought after they cannot be replaced. This will mean I will be facing a tab of about £500 in refunds. Nothing Hornby can do and, seemingly, nothing DPD are prepared to do either. The whole thing stinks a little.

 

Stay safe

 

Andy

Get a solicitor to send a note to DPD for the amount they owe and mention they will see you in the small claims court and have to pay your legal fees on top if they don't pay.

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Si Attica is back so a brace of Nurofen has been deployed.

 

20 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

I might ask Peco to use a different delivery company as a first port of call.(and any other company like Hornby too)

Depends on Hornby's contract with DPD. I've stopped buying products from Shapeways because of the courier company they use (UPS).

[Coombe Barton]

... I have got to have a break from writing and I must get the bum off the sofa ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/05/19/fourth-dose-in-the-autumn/

[polybear]

16 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

@andyram the situation stinks more than a little all this leaving parcels without signatures is wrong 

 

It seems that many couriers do it as routine now, having got the green light to do so during the height of covid and have just carried on anyway because it's quicker.

 

3 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

Get a solicitor to send a note to DPD for the amount they owe and mention they will see you in the small claims court and have to pay your legal fees on top if they don't pay.

 

I'd suggest there's no need for a solicitor's letter - one from yourself is fine, giving DPD a reasonable timescale to pay up otherwise you'll proceed via the SCC without further warning (tons of info on the web on such letters and the SCC).  All a solicitor will do is add maybe a couple of hundred quid to the cost (the court fee for claims up to £500 is fifty quid, or £70 to a grand).

Bear used the procedure many moons ago (mid 1980's) following a road smash, for £150 excess - their insurers paid up no problem (no liability blah blah blah.....), and Bear got all his increased premium payments back as well.  A result

[Grizz]

Evening All

 

This evening is beautiful in subtropical Sussex….

 

 

 

I’d be more disposed to enjoy it if I wasn’t so k nackered from only having had 3 hours Kip last night….thanks to the MOD on aerial manoeuvres over the South Downs National Park ……

 

…..and Thor bringing us a spectacular storm for hours and hours and hours…swearyswearyswearyswearywords.

 

 

Enjoy the rest of your evening all. 
 

ATB Grizz

Edited May 19, 2022 by Grizz
Missed an s

[simontaylor484]

25 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

Get a solicitor to send a note to DPD for the amount they owe and mention they will see you in the small claims court and have to pay your legal fees on top if they don't pay.

Dpd will be covered by Goods in Transit insurance 

[Ozexpatriate]

14 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

It sounds very much like a sawn off shotgun to me. ... The barrel was only 9" long

Except intentionally designed - not literally "sawn off". There are a whole category of 'shorty' weapons that take shotgun cartridges for short range purposes where careful aim may take too long. (One, designed in South Africa, uses a cylindrical magazine for a high semi-automatic* rate of fire and is nicknamed the "streetsweeper".)

 

* I believe.

[New Haven Neil]

The whole idea of Small Claims Courts is so avoid the use of solicitors, in order to make the process more affordable.  They are frowned on if they attend a hearing, I have personal experience of this (by the guy I sued for mullering my 3 day old Honda 750) but the downside is the defendant has the right to be heard in their home area.  I had to go to Derby from Tyneside to progress my claim, but the cost of a hire car was added to the bill.  The Judge sitting expressed displeasure at the defendant's insurance company sending a solicitor, and the fact they tried to settle out of Court with me seconds before he convened.  I won. 

Edited May 19, 2022 by New Haven Neil
Added words

[PhilJ W]

Hello again. Just been watching the antics of the fox cubs. One tried (unsuccessfully) to catch a starling by leaping up on a six foot wall. Once it realised that the starling was gone it calmly jumped up onto the roof of the garage block and strolled across and got down using my shed as a short cut.

[andyram]

1 hour ago, tigerburnie said:

I might ask Peco to use a different delivery company as a first port of call.(and any other company like Hornby too)

 

The situation has already been fed back to Hornby and Peco and they are both aware of the situation.

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 I wonder if there's actually any proof the parcel was delivered?  Thinking purely hypothetically  of course - there's also the possibility that the driver or his buddy came back a couple of minutes later (it wouldn't take Sherlock Homes to guess the sort of items that could be in the parcel - especially if it's marked with the sender).

 

In terms of proof it is very much my word against theirs. I have the photo which the driver took showing the two boxes on the doorstep. I have the photo I took showing the one box that remained. The doorway used to be covered by CCTV from the shop opposite but this has been changed since the owner of the shop changed recently. I therefore have no proof which would make any legal challenge somewhat difficult. 

[PhilJ W]

I wonder if the scrotes were aware that the CCTV cameras no longer covered your shop. Perhaps having your own CCTV or even a dummy might be an idea.

[polybear]

51 minutes ago, andyram said:

The doorway used to be covered by CCTV from the shop opposite but this has been changed since the owner of the shop changed recently. I therefore have no proof which would make any legal challenge somewhat difficult. 

 

33 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

I wonder if the scrotes were aware that the CCTV cameras no longer covered your shop. Perhaps having your own CCTV or even a dummy might be an idea.

 

I think there are (were?) rules about private CCTV overlooking public (or other private) land; Bear had an issue where the tw@t at the bottom of my back garden (he who planted 80 conifers to p1ss us all off...) who'd had "his blokes" fit Cameras just under the guttering of his house.

One of them pointed into Bear's back bedroom window muddling room window; the other looked over "his" own back garden - the Tenants were none too pleased either, as they had little kids.  They didn't know the cameras had been fitted....

Fast forward to the Community PC visiting (Bear made a complaint) and he said it was a big no-no too - he had words with the owner, who promptly blamed the installers (his guys) - yeah, right.....

Anyway, the PC told me that "there were no privacy issues with this camera configuration" - so Bear replied "so they're dummies then?"  "I never told you that" says he....

It turned out that in a previous life he worked for Security at Glaxo's - and their cameras had to have software blanking so that no public areas (i.e. immediately outside the security fences) were recorded.

It could be that all this has changed now - there does seem to be an awful lot of video from private buildings used in court case evidence (e.g. Murders) shown on the telly now.

[Ozexpatriate]

21 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Hey they saved our ar5e in WW2 (once they turned up!)

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

So the Americans like to think.

There is utterly no question that the US Navy saved Australia in 1942, after the bulk of the preexisting Australian army either held off Rommel in Tobruk so Tommies could nick off to Greece and Syria or were sitting in Japanese POW camps after the surrender of Singapore and the Royal Navy Eastern Fleet was swept away to the East Coast of Africa.

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Lets just put this in perspective:

 

WWII Casualties (Civilian & Miltary)

USSR: 24 million!

China: 20 million
Germany: 8.8 million

Japan: 3 million

UK: 450’0000

US: 418’000

How do WW2 casualties change the fact that the USN saved Australia from the Empire of Japan while the British Empire utterly failed to do so, despite the trust Australia placed in the Empire at the time?

 

The Battle of the Coral Sea and the US invasion of New Guinea were instrumental in defending Australia from the Empire of Japan.

 

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Some historians argue, with good reasons, that had Hitler not declared war on the US, America would have stayed out of the war in Europe - concentrating on the war in the Pacific (even lend-lease was a hard sell politically for Roosevelt).

Counterfactuals are always interesting, but Roosevelt believed war was inevitable and had allies in Congress like Carl Vinson*. Good examples are the Naval Acts in the 1930s, including the Vinson-Trammel Act of 1934, the Naval Act of 1936, the Naval Act of 1938 (the "second Vinson act")**, and the Two-Ocean Navy Act (Vinson-Walsh) of 1940.

 

* Later called the "father of the two-ocean navy"

** Iowa class battleships

 

CV-5 (USS Yorktown) was commissioned in 1937. CV-6 (USS Enterprise) was commissioned in 1938. It is hard to imagine the Pacific war without these vessels.

 

Excepting the army (which was politically expedient for Roosevelt to keep small) the navy (Roosevelt had been Assistant Secretary to the Navy from 1913-1919) was strong, along with the US Army Air Corps which had leading edge equipment like the B-17 (introduced in 1938). The B-24 and B-25 would be both introduced in 1941 (before the US entered the war). The Avro Lancaster would not be introduced until 1942.

 

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Such was the American isolationism of the late 1930s/early 1940s that some historians argue that had Japan simply invaded Indonesia for the oil & rubber they needed, completely ignoring any American targets, America would not have intervened and would have stayed out of WWII.

I assume you refer to the Philippines - US territory at the time. War between the United States and the Empire of Japan was inevitable - given Japanese territorial objectives. The Empire of Japan wasn't just interested in oil and rubber.

 

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Such was the impact of the Soviet Union on the outcome of the war that some historians argue that it wasn’t the atomic bombings that made the Japanese surrender but the Soviet Union's declaration of war and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

The threat of the Soviets to Japan is downplayed far too much in 'conventional' histories. The Soviet Union did not declare war on Japan until August 8, 1945 and prior to that were signatories to the Japanese–Soviet Non-aggression Pact of 1941. During the night of August 9, the Emperor broke a 3-3 vote tie in the Imperial council with a decision to surrender (though not unconditionally). The atomic bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9.

 

One could argue that the atomic devastation made it possible to 'save face' instead of contemplating what Ketsugō * would look like with Soviets. (I don't have a note of when the Emperor was taken out of the palace on a tour of bombing damage**, but it is speculated that this influenced his decision. He had told his war cabinet he wanted to send an envoy to Moscow to mediate an end to the war as early as June 22.)

 

Once the Emperor recorded his surrender broadcast on August 14, he would survive a failed coup d'etat*** before the broadcast was made.

 

* The 'last stand' philosophy

** Operation Meetinghouse (firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945) resulted in more more immediate casualties than either atomic bomb and 50% of Tokyo was destroyed in 14 B-29 raids.

*** Kyūjō incident (night of August 14-15, 1945)

 

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

A sobering thought, unlike with other occupied countries of WWII, occupied Germany and Japan produced no resistance as they had nothing left with which to resist.

The citizens of Japan were instructed to surrender by their Emperor, and they were on the brink of famine in late summer of 1945. One of the most strategic raids of the war was the sinking of nine of the Seikan N.R. rail ferries from Hokkaido to Honshu in mid-July by USN Task Force 38 carrier borne aircraft, dramatically curtailing coal supplies to Honshu; effectively ending Japanese ability to prosecute the war.

 

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Equally sobering is the fact that the Axis countries - bombed flat and forced to rebuild from scratch - are doing so, so much better on so very many measures of social and economic prosperity than the erstwhile victors of WWII.

The Marshall Plan was an amazing accomplishment was it not?

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

If it wasn't the entry of the US into the war due to Pearl Harbour we'd all be driving around in Japanese cars now.

I thought most Australians were driving Japanese or South Korean cars these days? 😉

 

Thanks again to the Marshall Plan! While it is a bit incongruous that companies like Mitsubishi and Bavarian holocaust slave drivers get to profit by making cars, it is a far better outcome for the world than what the disastrous reparations of the Treaty of Versailles wrought.

 

If it wasn't for the entry of the US to the war, we'd have grown up speaking Japanese. Having said that I really do like Japanese food.

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, AndrewC said:

Et voila, the orign of the phrase pork barrel politics. 

Not quite from colonial election day barbeques - but from politicians bringing home the bacon to their constituents with legislative stuffing.

 

Wikipedia suggests:

Quote

By the 1870s, references to "pork" were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in the National Municipal Review, which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress as "pork barrel bills". He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving slaves a barrel of salt pork as a reward and requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

7 hours ago, TheQ said:

Though Poland fought bravely, Belarus was one of the main battle grounds between the USSR and the Nazis and lost out from everyone.

So was Ukraine, for those who had survived Stalin's genocidal famine there in the 1930s (Holodomor).

 

They were the front lines of the Eastern Front in the "Great War" as well.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Ozexpatriate