Early Risers.

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Turns out that  fibro was actually made of asbestos...

 

It does explain a lot...

 

[polybear]

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

In the 60's and 70's "fibro" ( a white sheeting used to clad exteriors of homes, interiors of garages and under eaves etc) was the plaything of choice. Builders left it lying about construction sites and you could use  a small offcut as you would chalk,  to draw pictures and handball courts on roads and pavements, and you could make cubbies etc out of the larger offcuts, or break those up  into handy Frisbee sized bits to have frisbee wars with all your mates.  (Nothing hurts like a fibro frisbee to the forehead!)

 

Turns out that  fibro was actually made of asbestos...

 

Between fibro toys and  psycho  horses, , its a wonder the Australian  Life Expectancy stats aren't in the low 40's. 

 

In the news now:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-68302052

[polybear]

Bear here.....

Awake at sillyo'clock again - but managed (several times) to re-enter the Land of Zedd until 06-30, which is a Tick;  watching some of the documentary about the rather lovely Suzi Quatro last night probably helped - sadly I didn't have any dreams about her though....

Managing to keep occupied so far - now't exciting but some does involve prepping for an unspeakable project, so that's another Tick.

The good news is it appears that A Certain Bear has managed to hit the 73Kg mark (was 75Kg) - meaning my BMI is now a mere 0.2 (or 0.6Kg) over the limit, which is A Very Big Tick.  At least the pain is equalling gain - more to do though, as I'd ideally like to get to 70Kg but that might be a bit ambitious.  We'll see.

More good news is the weather is looking reasonable for a wander at some point, so that's on the cards for later if all goes to plan.

 

BG

[Smiffy2]

Aaargh!

#1 son has just messaged me - #2 granddaughter (Rose) has chickenpox, he & wife ill, not coming for lunch, #1 granddaughter (Daisy) & boyfriend staying away to avoid the CP.

 

I've been standing in the kitchen cooking for 11 and now it's 6!

 

There's a bottle of wine open in the kitchen...

[Smiffy2]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmm, perhaps Whelkmen are the Brit version of Dropbears?  

I couldn't possibly comment.

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

Here in England’s northwest corner, there has been a dramatic change in the weather, gone has the dark clouds and rain and we have been presented with blue skies and sunshine! I do hope it stays like this for a few days, the garden could do with a bit of a drying session. There’s not a lot planned for today, Ava is due to arrive at about 12 - 12:30 and Sheila has commandeered the kitchen for domestic chores, so I’m keeping well out of the way. She may only be 5ft, but even I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of her right hook! So, I may head down to the cellar and sit at the computer until Ava arrives. 
 

Back later. 
 

Brian

Edited February 24 by BSW01

[monkeysarefun]

35 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Bear apparently have to undertake no less than eight mandatory** courses as a part of being a volunteer; they include such joys as:  Safeguarding Awareness, Equality & Diversity and Information Governance.....

How on earth the WW2 Factories ever managed to turn out any Aircraft, Ships, Munitions etc. without such essentials is a complete mystery to This Bear.

 

**Not to be confused with statutory courses - which are legal requirements.

 

 

 

Every time I go to a flying base (eg RAAF Williamstown, RAAF Darwin etc) that has aircraft operations I have to sit through a safety briefing which goes for about 15 minutes but is basically "Planes are dangerous, so stay away from  the runway". I've been going to these bases periodically for 20 years or so to install IT infrastructure  and have yet to even see a runway.

Edited February 24 by monkeysarefun

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Slept well last night, only a couple of interventions by bladder control only one of those interventions the bar stewards didn't give me enough time to reach the bathroom so I had to clean up afterwards. The other problem is that the doctor told me to lay off the Nurofen for a week, virtually the only painkiller I can take is paracetamol so Arthur Itis is making himself felt.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, southern42 said:

Bowsanarras

I knew him as a part of ship’s company. Bosun ‘arris. 
 

 

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

 

In the news now:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-68302052

 

 

Its going to be a huge cleanup job and there will be many questions to answer, I wouldn't like to be the owners of the mulch company.    Kudos though this time to the state government who once the initial contaminated site was discovered pro-actively audited all other sites across the state that have had mulch delivered recently and tested them too, then earmarked them for remediation.

 

It would have been far easier and cheaper for them  to ignore, cover up, deny, pass the buck  or lie about it as governments tend to do.

Edited February 24 by monkeysarefun

[Gwiwer]

7 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Slept well last night, only a couple of interventions by bladder control

Likewise. 
 

There’s always been adequate warning - thus far - of the need to make the nocturnal dash. But why oh why does Captain Slackbladder* have his way less than an hour before the alarm is due?  
 

Does one attempt to sleep the last little bit, shrug it off and get up early or turn the alarm off and sleep in? 
 

* © Blackadder Goes Forth 

[BachelorBoy]

37 minutes ago, polybear said:

How on earth the WW2 Factories ever managed to turn out any Aircraft, Ships, Munitions etc. without such essentials is a complete mystery to This Bear.

 

They managed it. But a lot of people were injured unnecessarily. Perhaps that's acceptable, or even necessary, in a time of a war.

 

Diversity/inclusion? Plenty of wartime propaganda to encourage men to accept women in factories. and for women to accept they could do men's work.  Plenty of talk about the family of the Empire, people of all races and classes, fighting together and pulling together against Hitler and Tojo.

 

(it's not a good idea to racially abuse a British West Indian who'd volunteered to defend the Mother Country if you want him to lay down his life for Britain -- mind you there was plenty of racist propaganda to make sure everyone hated the Japanese)

 

Plenty of training films shown to US soldiers, for example, about what Britain would like when they got there ... how culture was different and how to avoid misunderstandings (eg "fags"). 

 

Information security and governance? Loose lips sink ships. And volunteers who don't understand why you shouldn't share passwords may well let hackers in to cause all sorts of trouble.

 

As for mandatory courses? Well, a great way for management to protect itself against volunteers who screw up. If they've been sent on a course, and they still act the wrong way and get the organisation into trouble, then the managers have covered their arses.

 

 

 

 

[Grizz]

53 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Bear apparently have to undertake no less than eight mandatory** courses as a part of being a volunteer; they include such joys as:  Safeguarding Awareness, Equality & Diversity and Information Governance.....

How on earth the WW2 Factories ever managed to turn out any Aircraft, Ships, Munitions etc. without such essentials is a complete mystery to This Bear.

 

**Not to be confused with statutory courses - which are legal requirements.

Mmmmmm with all those behind you ought to apply to work for London’s Premier Transport Provider….you’d be a shoe in. 
 

Go on a ‘how not to staple your own hand to your own desk’ accident prevention training course.On the basis that someone (a manager already did that).

Or drugs awareness in the work place….that was fun. Tripping balls for weeks after that mushroom risotto. 
 

Or the management and reporting of bullying, harassment and violence in the work place, that when you actually experience it from within, they ignor all their own processes and procedures and withhold details and evidence of criminal activity from Police and other law enforcement agencies as it clashes with political ends. 
 

But obviously you’d still have to attend the mandatory indoctrination and political reconstruction courses, just to ensure that you are up with the latest preferential league tables. Never mind what to your real job in the meantime, as that comes second. 
 

Also if you don’t go on those courses….it then becomes a disciplinary matter. Seriously. 
 

 

 

[iL Dottore]

56 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Bear apparently have to undertake no less than eight mandatory** courses as a part of being a volunteer; they include such joys as:  Safeguarding Awareness, Equality & Diversity and Information Governance.....

How on earth the WW2 Factories ever managed to turn out any Aircraft, Ships, Munitions etc. without such essentials is a complete mystery to This Bear.

 

**Not to be confused with statutory courses - which are legal requirements.

 

21 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

Every time I go to a flying base (eg RAAF Williamstown, RAAF Darwin etc) that has aircraft operations I have to sit through a safety briefing which goes for about 15 minutes but is basically "Planes are dangerous, so stay away from  the runway". I've been going to these bases periodically for 20 years or so to install IT infrastructure  and have yet to even see a runway.

Ah yes, but without all this what would m’learnėd friends have to do?

 

Finding incredibly unlikely situations (e.g being landed on by a Huey Gunship whilst taking a selfie standing in the middle of the 09R/27L runway at Heathrow at 03:00 on Sunday) that have to be warned about, seems to be a profitable activity.

 

But not as profitable as the whole “professionally offended” circus.

 

It’s quite simple really:

1. Find something that can cause “offence” (e.g. tinned baked beans)
2. Get soshul meeja all riled up
3. Sue somebody over the fact that someone was offended by being offered tinned baked beans
4. Help draft bizarre laws that prohibit the sale, use or mention of baked beans.
5. Help draft puerile, pointless and condescending “awareness” training about baked beanism in the workplace 
6. Sue some poor b*****r who doesn’t implement the now “mandatory” baked bean awareness training.
7. Rinse and repeat.

Of course each steps involves hefty “fees for service”

 

Cynical? Moi.

 

[monkeysarefun]

12 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

mind you there was plenty of racist propaganda to make sure everyone hated the Japanese

 

 

 

Truth be told, they were pretty bloody awful. Many here hated the Japanese up until the 1970's, and it was nothing to do with racism.

Edited February 24 by monkeysarefun

[Hroth]

6 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

 

Ah yes, but without all this what would m’learnėd friends have to do?

 

Finding incredibly unlikely situations (e.g being landed on by a Huey Gunship whilst taking a selfie standing in the middle of the 09R/27L runway at Heathrow at 03:00 on Sunday) that have to be warned about, seems to be a profitable activity.

 

But not as profitable as the whole “professionally offended” circus.

 

It’s quite simple really:

1. Find something that can cause “offence” (e.g. tinned baked beans)
2. Get soshul meeja all riled up
3. Sue somebody over the fact that someone was offended by being offered tinned baked beans
4. Help draft bizarre laws that prohibit the sale, use or mention of baked beans.
5. Help draft puerile, pointless and condescending “awareness” training about baked beanism in the workplace 
6. Sue some poor b*****r who doesn’t implement the now “mandatory” baked bean awareness training.
7. Rinse and repeat.

Of course each steps involves hefty “fees for service”

 

Cynical? Moi.

 

 

As Flanders and Swann sang

 

"Oh it all makes work for the working man to do"...

 

[Grizz]

Ok so no one was actually murdering Mrs Grizz but I didn’t know that when her scream from downstairs raised me up off of the bed and down the wooden hill in around 5 seconds. I feel sick and my heart is racing.

 

And do you know what the cause of this actually was….

 

One of these little gits drop on her from the top of a kitchen cupboard door. 
 

 

Mrs Grizz is a hardy field ornament girl. Not known for her hysterical behaviour, far from it. However she apparently draws the line at False Widow Spiders landing on her head, as she put it “Uninvited”…..

 

Sadly this was the spiders last mistake, as I was ordered to capture it (under a pint glass) and feed it to the chooks. 
 

I won’t go into details of its final moments..but think Jurassic Park T Rexes fighting over a human. 
 

 

 

Edited February 24 by Grizz
Spelling auto coroet

[woodenhead]

15 hours ago, polybear said:

Bear here.....

The day started pretty well with the paddlin', but after that it turned into a flaky kinda day containing pointless dross really :(  I would've liked to have gone for a wander this arvo, but threats of significant sky wee wee put paid to that idea.

No idea what tomorrow will bring - but I must get a lot better at MIUABGA.

BG

You need to learn to accept the sky wee - it's just holy water before it's been turned to wine.  I used to be like that, not going out because of a threat of rain but more recently have I have realised that an umbrella is kind of quite good and as a result I do a lot more walking between places now rather than using four wheels.  Even went up into the Pennines recently with some wet weather gear and rather wanted it to wee a little bit so I could experience it.

 

Obvs I don't want to be out when it's absolutely p1ssing down and windy.

[Flanged Wheel]

Catching up on a few days of ER while doing oodles of laundry following our final few days in the Borneo rainforest (we love the rainforest but it is terribly grubby). We were in the small but perfectly formed Bako National Park near Kuching. The wildlife and plant life were exceptional.

 

Given that we have already established my dubious film taste, it may come as no surprise that I quite enjoyed the ‘new’ film version of HGTTG. I had low expectations but they were easily surpassed and I agree that it was well cast.

 

I thought I would share a quick story for those who despair of the future of our sceptered isle. In the National Park, we met a group of three young students who had just completed their medical training at one of the leading UK universities. They stood out in the way that they treated the staff, interacted with each other and generally behaved (in stark comparison to some of the other guests present). In particular, they were very wonderful with my youngest son who took them off to see some of the wildlife that he had seen. I’m absolutely not trying to make any political or nationalist point but it was lovely to meet some fantastic young people (who are likely to end up working in the NHS). 

 

I’ll add my voice to the chorus of approval for the return of @polybear - it’s great to see you back. Given the Bear’s love of nature, here is a one of the jungle creatures that we found just off the path (a Bornean Keeled Pit Viper)…

 

[Grizz]

13 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

 

Ah yes, but without all this what would m’learnėd friends have to do?

 

Finding incredibly unlikely situations (e.g being landed on by a Huey Gunship whilst taking a selfie standing in the middle of the 09R/27L runway at Heathrow at 03:00 on Sunday) that have to be warned about, seems to be a profitable activity.

 

But not as profitable as the whole “professionally offended” circus.

 

It’s quite simple really:

1. Find something that can cause “offence” (e.g. tinned baked beans)
2. Get soshul meeja all riled up
3. Sue somebody over the fact that someone was offended by being offered tinned baked beans
4. Help draft bizarre laws that prohibit the sale, use or mention of baked beans.
5. Help draft puerile, pointless and condescending “awareness” training about baked beanism in the workplace 
6. Sue some poor b*****r who doesn’t implement the now “mandatory” baked bean awareness training.
7. Rinse and repeat.

Of course each steps involves hefty “fees for service”

 

Cynical? Moi.

 

Oooooooo I forgot the professionally offended. Woah that was an entire two week training course in its own right. 
 

However L.P.T.P. called them offended victims. And it came with a hand book.
 

Which informed you how you could be offended on behalf of someone else, even if you weren’t offended yourself, and how the person you were offended on behalf of didn’t need to be present.
 And further how if you failed to report an incident of offence, or potential offence and it later emerged that you knew about it and failed to report and escalate it….then you could be disciplined for gross misconduct and potentially be dismissed. 
 

Monitoring of people’s speech, language, use and fail to use pronouns, tone of voice and tone of electronic communication all constantly monitored. Leading to a potential tidal wave of malicious and vexatious grievances whenever subordinates were asked to carry out utterly unreasonable and unacceptable requests….erm like their actual job. 
 

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

6 minutes ago, Grizz said:

Oooooooo I forgot the professionally offended. Woah that was an entire two week training course in its own right. 
 

However L.P.T.P. called them offended victims. And it came with a hand book.
 

Which informed you how you could be offended on behalf of someone else, even if you weren’t offended yourself, and how the person you were offended on behalf of didn’t need to be present.
 And further how if you failed to report an incident of offence, or potential offence and it later emerged that you knew about it and failed to report and escalate it….then you could be disciplined for gross misconduct and potentially be dismissed. 
 

Monitoring of people’s speech, language, use and fail to use pronouns, tone of voice and tone of electronic communication all constantly monitored. Leading to a potential tidal wave of malicious and vexatious grievances whenever subordinates were asked to carry out utterly unreasonable and unacceptable requests….erm like their actual job. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

See, now YOU'RE messing with my head, like that @Smiffy2 guy!   I dont know whether you made this up and so are being very clever and really funny, in which case I'd  give this a "funny", or  is it actually true, in which case you'd get a "friendly/supportive"

 

I'm going to have to hold back and wait for the others!

Edited February 24 by monkeysarefun

[BachelorBoy]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

Every time I go to a flying base (eg RAAF Williamstown, RAAF Darwin etc) that has aircraft operations I have to sit through a safety briefing which goes for about 15 minutes but is basically "Planes are dangerous, so stay away from  the runway". I've been going to these bases periodically for 20 years or so to install IT infrastructure  and have yet to even see a runway.

 

They're airbases. They will have thousands of visits from people like you a year. Rather than spend ages trying to work out who's going to go near a runway, and who isn't, it's much simpler and sensible to treat everyone as if they are at some point.  

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

1 minute ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

They're airbases. They will have thousands of visits from people like you a year. Rather than spend ages trying to work out who's going to go near a runway, and who isn't, it's much simpler and sensible to treat everyone as if they are at some point.  

 

 

 

 

Or they could just have a list with my name ticked off.

[polybear]

6 minutes ago, Grizz said:

And further how if you failed to report an incident of offence, or potential offence and it later emerged that you knew about it and failed to report and escalate it….then you could be disciplined for gross misconduct and potentially be dismissed. 

 

Which of course means that you've now grassed someone up - and depending on who that "someone" is you're either marked accordingly and "sent to Coventry" or alternatively your Career Prospects just reduced to Nil.

 

Cynical?  Moi?

[BachelorBoy]

The content and aims of most of these briefing and training sessions do seem like commonsense much of the time.

 

But, as has been noted on the internet before, a lot of people do seem to lack common sense.

 

There's no easy test for who's got commonsense or not, and whether they have the right sort of commonsense for this day and age, and so it's better to treat everyone as if they don't have commonsense.