jjb1970

Someone needs to introduce the mighty Hokkaido cheese tart to blighty.

Of particular interest to this forum is that Willie was an extremely accomplished modeller. Not just railways (he had a garden railway and and avid model railway enthusiast) but ships and probably anything that could be modelled. He had a wonderful large scale scratchbuilt ferry, and a lovely RC Leander class frigate. He also made the famous Matchbox 1/72 kit of the Flower class Corvette as an RC model. I was at school with his youngest son and we were very close friends. I remember Mr Taylor, a lovely man, his shed was every modellers dream. He used to take us to sail his warship flotilla. Considering some asinine locomotive names this is richly deserved (overdue), a wonderful gesture.

I am old enough to remember advocates of Japanese brass models claiming models made in the Republic of Korea were inferior and couldn't match Japanese craftsmanship. That may have been true in the early days but Korean manufacturers like Ajin and Samhongsa surpassed the Japanese. Later, it was said Chinese producers couldn't match Korean brass in the remaining brass micro-niche despite the fact they very quickly did. In a more serious and consequential example, I was assured by Norwegian ship builders that shipyards in the Republic of Korea would never match them for LNG tank fabrication. They very quickly matched them and did it more efficiently and for less. The Koreans said the same about China with similar results other than I think the Korean yards still have an edge in efficiency.

It's not just model railways. There are always claims that manufacture of X will stay in country A because they're the only ones with the capability and skills to do it. What that really means is the economic and operational arguments to make the necessary investment to build skills and capability somewhere else don't (yet) stack up. If the calculation changes then the capabilities can be developed elsewhere surprisingly quickly.

I honestly wish the problem at the MoD was incompetent civil servants, as in that case the problems might be addressed by a campaign of firing and hiring new people. I used to do a lot of work for the MoD and spent a lot of time in Bristol, and contrary to what is often portrayed I found the people I dealt with highly competent and committed to doing a good job. They were good people in a dysfunctional system. Where I did see ineptitude was at higher levels in Whitehall. Even there it was in many cases less incompetence than arrogance. I had the same argument repeatedly on certain issues such as special engines for warships, they genuinely seemed to believe commercially available engines were junk and that there was an industry anxiously awaiting the opportunity to design and build a super duper diesel engine for 8 frigates. They couldn't get the fact that even if they had the money to pay for such an engine none of the engine builders would be interested because engineering resource needed to develop and build an engine which would struggle to get into double figures wouldn't be working on designs that would sell 100's or 1000's. I explained multiple times that Wartsila, MAN et al really couldn't care less about the MoD, customers like Maersk, Evergreen, COSCO buy more engines in a year than the MoD will buy from them over several decades, followed by huge orders for spares and support, it's their standard engine or go somewhere else. That always went down like a lead balloon. Even the USN, which orders a lot more ships than the RN, struggles to find interest in the big equipment suppliers to deviate from standard designs as it's not worth the effort. The other issue is when they sign contracts with a commercial customer they have a delivery date, it's sent to a yard, goes through an acceptance test and job done. I know companies who actively avoid warship work as they can't face years of endless meetings, interference and efforts to change orders midway through delivery etc. If the MoD was building 100's of ships the gain would be worth the pain but the orders are trivial. I used to get orders of magnitude more booked hours for MoD work than I needed for much more complicated approvals work for merchant vessels, however in my case my employer saw political value in the military work despite being able to make a lot more doing a lot less commercially. The department I do find properly incompetent is DfT, but that's another story.

The Tony Martin case was a lesson in why we should be sceptical about what we read in the media. A lot of the press presented the case as the law gone mad prosecuting a fine upstanding English man doing nought more than defending his castle. While his victims were not persons I can feel much sympathy for, neither can I feel sympathy for Martin who seems to have fully deserved incarceration.

Such arrangements are very common, Tamiya had a similar arrangement, and entities like camera manufacturers and electronics manufacturers often have arrangements with magazines.

I have been looking at Japanese brass kits. Brass models are popular in Japan and several companies offer beautifully done factory finished brass models. The most famous in the western world is probably Tenshodo, who actually outsourced manufacturing. Some of these companies offer models in kit form for those who like kit building. The kits are extremely professionally produced. Maybe because they're designed to be serially built and finished by the factory so they demand something that is well designed and goes together well for their own reasons. Brass bodies are preformed, chassis are often milled or pre-assembled and the instructions (albeit in Japanese) are comprehensive. While building and getting a good result takes a lot of skill, the chassis and running gear is straightforward assembly. And they are in many cases fully complete, though they do offer body kits. They're not cheap (they're very expensive) but they're pretty much produced to the same standards as something like a Tamiya kit, but in brass. I have been very tempted to do one.

It's like a hammer horror movie outside, heavy rain, thunder and lightning. Thunder and lightning here is bonkers, properly violent.

I have a soft spot for vehicle carriers. They're ugly but there's a kind of honesty about them, a ruthless application of form following function to maximize volume within length and beam constraints. And they serve a useful purpose.

A very sad story, it doesn't reflect well on the Police. As with many things, this issue tends to polarize opinion. I don't support vilifying Police officers for doing their duty and it's true that post facto inquiries have time and resource to analyse events in a way not possible for someone in a high stress situation forced to make a split second decision, in many cases based on imperfect information. On the other hand there should be a process to ensure that where force is used it has been used in a reasonable and proportionate way and to maintain trust in the Police and other organizations which may be involved. That will almost inevitably involve lawyers but as with many things it strikes me that the problem is not so much that there are processes to investigate such events but the form of those processes and institutional failings such as failure of the Police to support officers during the process.

Whether or not I think armed forces ministers should have served in the military I do think there may be a link between the fact that very few of our politicians have served or been subjected to what war means as a civilian and their propensity to deploy the military, authorize air strikes etc. It's not just politicians, there's an apathy to it among the public who don't feel any particular ill effects from foreign wars unless they're close to someone who comes back deceased or injured and things like drones have dehumanized war to make it seem like a video game, aided by a very sanitized media reporting of events.

The weak yen is splendid, I have been making hay while the sun shines with Chinese and Japanese model trains. I use Japanese buying services to access Yahoo Japan auctions and shopping and sites like Mercari, the fee is trivial (500 yen) and I find Japanese sellers honest with descriptions. In recent weeks I have bought a pair of DF4B diesels by Haidar and a Shaoshan 1 electric by N27, all factory finished and painted HO brass. Beautiful models (as good as Japanese and Korean brass) and price for three recent models, mint, boxed with all paperwork and accessories (all three look unused) was about £670 including shipping and GST from Yahoo auctions which is a steal (that's more or less price new for one of them). I also got a JR EF63 electric by Endo, factory finished and painted brass, the latest release, a stunning model. That was more expensive but still a third of price new. For anyone interested in Japanese stuff accessing Japanese sites via buying services is well worth a look. There are similar services in China too.

This has been shown in many places where often the people who have found it easiest to adjust and switch sides to the new regime were the most hard core servants of the last one. A related phenomenon is that the most evil crimes have often been perpetrated by ordinary people 'just doing a job' who in slightly different circumstances would have had entirely uneventful lives doing a humdrum job.

Use of modern double deck motor and driving vehicles with much older single deck intermediate coaches, it looked very odd.

A Turkish 787, there was something in the news the other day about them deferring a potential big order with Boeing and leaning more towards Airbus.

This one is slightly unusual for Tanjong Pagar, we don't see many of the MOL ACE ships in this livery.

The good thing about lemon drizzle cake is it has lemon in it so counts as one of your five a day and is a health food. Just like carrot cake.

On lemon drizzle cakes, Mrs JJB made a most excellent lemon drizzle chiffon cake today, splendid.

The standard of British OO RTR is excellent. At the high end companies like Accurascale, SLW, Cavalex and Rapido are world class. When Bachmann get it right they're world class too. Hornby and Dapol are more mixed, ditto Heljan but when they hit the mark they're superb. I don't know much about Revolution OO but their N models have been superbly done.

Look on the bright side, if the tarantulas and monitor lizards don't get you marauding gangs of macaques will: https://stomp.straitstimes.com/singapore-seen/bukit-timah-condo-under-attack-by-monkeys-that-enter-homes-and-leave-trail-of

I don't like the working lamp feature, it's an idea which sounds interesting but just hasn't been implemented very well IMO. That aside, there are lots of positives about this model, if it works. That's my worry, are the reports about it having problems working just those offering opinions suffering bad luck or indicative of a systemic manufacturing problem? I know a lot of people hate Sam but in terms of confidence to rectify faults and work on models I'd rate his ability as above average and whatever faults he might have he does seem able to address typical issues with models. Take his opinions on other aspects of the model as opinions, but the quality issue is worrying as a model should work out of the box. However, without figures we don't know whether he just got unlucky or if it is indeed a systemic fault.

On the guns argument, many years ago when a colleague wanted me to develop my career in regulatory policy he used a nice analogy - if you have a leaking roof you can put a bucket under the leak or you can fix the leak. He was a Japanese lawyer who basically ran the external affairs department of a marine classification society I worked for at the time. I can't help feeling the analogy is germane to Policing and law & order. I don't dispute that the Police need the tools to respond to and deal with bad people and nutters, but the real issue is why they have to do so in the first place. Society has always had bad people and nutters, but over my life what was once abberant has become quite common. And it's not just an American phenomenon, there have been mass killings and severely messed up behaviour in lots of countries. If it had always been so, or was universal we might say it was part of the human condition, but it hasn't always been so and isn't universal. Which begs the questions of what, why, how.

The Hawker Hunter was a lovely looking aircraft, it remains one of the most elegant looking aircraft ever built IMO.

This one looks a bit precarious, it looks like one of the reefers which serve deep sea fishing fleets (pretty much the only reefer ship segment still doing well as most reefer cargo is now containerised). Ordinarily I'd guess a ship in the that state of trim/heel was listed deliberately for maintenance or work, but given the state of some of the boats serving deep sea fishing anything is possible.