alastairq

There is much political banging-on about making testing 'easier', recruiting, etc. I seem to recall there were massive campaigns, financial incentives, etc and much money poured into the health sector to boost nursing numbers? Everybody bangs on with ideas to make things easier, or 'boost recruitment', but, as the health sector discovered it's one thing having the finance there to increase numbers...its entirely another thing to actually get folk to actually apply for the positions! We've had this problem for 50 or 60 years now. The problem being that the so-called 'working classes' in the UK gradually ceased to exist as such. Back in the 1950's through to the 1970's, I recall London Transport having real staffing issues with drivers. No-one actually wanted to drive buses in London...out of the nations so-called 'work-force'. Staff had to be recruited from other parts of the world. Huge numbers came from areas like the Caribbean, simply to drive London buses. Only the daft young enthusiasts like me would apply to LT to be trained as a driver! My family [such as it was] were frankly horrified that I went to drive London buses, instead of making use of my ''education' and tottering off to university to study for ''something worthwhile''... Imagine going around the 6th form colleges today and trying to recruit youngsters to be 'lorry drivers?' Perhaps we should encourage more boat people to arrive, as long as they promise to drive lorries? Shortage of tanker drivers? The Army [& Hair Force] have already got training in hand for military personnel to take over driving civilian tankers...[Op summat or other]....Strategic operation in case of a tanker drivers' strike....but could easily be used for other strategic reasons. [These folk are trained & assessed to the tanker Owners' required standards....before anybody questions the wisdom of letting an RLC driver loose in Birmingham with a tanker full of petrol? How do I know? Well,it was one of the strings to my bow I had, when I worked]

There...just for you?

Not a cough, nor a cold, since I retired.... I guess folk steer well clear of a grumpy smelly old git?

I cannot believe folk are still buying{?} newspapers....

Chinese-made repro pistols..JB will miss at that distance! US trade deals? [We can, apparently, now offload all our dead sheep to the US!] I think the US is running scared on that one? They're worried we might try to off-load all our Chinese-made rubbish onto the gullible American public? Cannot be having that at all, can we? After all, most American-made goods really means ''Made in Taiwan?'' Anyway, we can export to Canada, and let them con the Yanks?

The answer, of course, is, open-top buses? {In all weathers too..that'll fettle 'em!] For the railways, there's always the cattle wagons?

Lidls own-brand biccies are better! Their Jaffa cakes are quite the finest jaffa cakes around..and knock the original ''Jaffa Cakes'' into a cocked hat, taste-wise.....so my dearest daughter says. Anyway, methinks time to go the home-made biscuit route? My Ex [Number 3 Ex] made some cookies the other day.....I got two...Son ate one instantly, then asked about the other one last night [when on a visit]....very disappointed when I told him I'd eaten it! I think I'm supposed to save the goodies my Ex gives me, for my son's visits???? I get homemade bread from the Ex as well. We 'share' the minimal cost of flour from our local mill [Bradmalt flour]...18 kilo bags for less than a tenner. Biggest problem with home made is sourcing supplies of yeasts, and other ingredients....

Even longer than a decade....maybe two or three decades? A possible problem is that the [eastern?] European countries which yielded much of our lower paid labour market, have now got a standard of living close to, or even better, than that of the UK...So there is no longer an incentive for folks to come here, to work. When I worked for the MoD, training military personnel , there were oft quoted figures for the numbers of Cat C & C+E licence holders in the UK. On the face of it, there seemed to be plenty of drivers. But a very significant proportion of those licence holders didn't work in the haulage industry. Nor were they ever likley to. The problem is, there are plenty of licence holders out there.....few of which actually want to use those vocational categories......Me included! One often heard reason might have been, the unwarranted pressure placed on drivers [via modern technology] by those in haulage management positions...under pressure to achieve targets themselves. Many a driver I know could happily do without that annoying aspect of the job. Allied with the above must be, health issues? Stress? {Especially negative stress?} Because my pay as a civil servant [alluded to by others] was pretty pathetic, I used to do some weekend work for a local haulage company...mainly driving artics to some ungodly parts of places like Glasgow, London, even Dover or Fife. I really hated it, for all the pushing and shoving of pallet trucks...[Mosty NISA deliveries.....Horrible job] What I got paid for a couple of weekend day's work often equalled what the regular drivers got for their working week. One part I really really hated was having to get my overnight break in Heston services, on the M4. [A Saturday night, usually] Had to be there, for the crack o dawn first deliveries around London...Like stopping over in a Bulgarian gipsy encampment! Really strong smell of carbolic soap!! Hated it!!! Packed it in after a while, too much strain on the wife-of-the-moment...

Except , I don't use the splitter all the time...just short bursts now & then.....I try to do it when neighbours are trying to charge their cars....pinching a few of their volts.

I think this is down to Lidl's stock policies as a whole, perhaps? Lidl have a tendency to mix types of stock of the same category, all together in one box. For example, their 'deluxe' ground coffees? Each box, when it hits the shelf, contains at least three different sorts of ground coffee. Now, I prefer by far the Guatemalan blend...the purple coloured pack. I don't like the columbian, or the other one at all. Yet they all come in the same box. So it's a matter of shopping the Lidl way, sorting through the boxes to find the colour of coffee pack I like. It seems my favourite is also the favorite of a lot of other local customers, so the purple packs soon disappear, leaving the less popular ones, taking longer to sell before the store re-stocks. As a result, I now grab a purple pack whenever I see one, regardless of whether I actually need one or not. Because I just know that if I wait till next week, the purple ones will be nowhere to be seen. Same goes for laundry liquid, fro example....bio, color bio & non bio all come in the same box..... A confirmed Lidl shopper is used to rummaging!!! Currently I don't know whether Lidl is suffering from a driver shortage or stock shortage or what? Simply because, Lidls is always like that. The people who suffer must be those customers who use the likes of Tesco, etc..??

It'll soon be like shopping in Moscow, in the 1960's?

Which is why I use a redundant white goods carcass [well, not quite, still has most of its guts inside].....This was scheduled for a tip-trip, but now has a reprieve. The cost of the stand was a bit of a luxury for me....If it's really an issue I can knock one up from scrounged scrap bits of steel quickly enough. Another way I've used the splitter is to stand it in the back of my Daihatsu 4Trak..... I'm not suggesting one's nice electric hatchback be used.....however..... I should add, the splitter is very good at chombling up the narstie gnarly bits of tree that an axe won't even look at...When in receipt of free heating, one shouldn't really complain too much...

https://forest-master.com/product/fast-lightweight-5-ton-electric-log-splitter-300mm-with-work-bench-guard-fm5d-tc/ It's this one...but I got mine on an offer last year. It has the shortest bed [my log burner cannot cope with anything more than about 12 inches, so all my tree rounds are sliced to roughly that size] I didn't assemble all the steel work that came with it, as I need to shift it about. I sit it on top of a busted tumble dryer for ease of working height. It'll take tree rounds of pretty much any girth [much more than 300 mm the specs state]...just balance the tree round on the vee bed, and possibly hold with your chin, then operate...the ram will split it in two, then it becomes even more manageable. Simple to operate, just open the hydraulic air bleed a turn or two, then start splitting. Needs two hands to operate though. Close hydraulic bleed when finished for the day. Forest Master do a good deal on hydraulic oil too [as my friendly tree hugger found out] I've been splitting tree rounds of anything up too 2 foot 6 diameter....but only about 10 inches thick. Save some time by inserting a bit of log in front of ram,, between the log to be split & ram, saves time as the ram doesn't have to return quite so far.

Ash, BTW, dries quickly enough..Split now, and it'll be good for December [woolly cardies for November, sorry!] A lot will be dead & half dry anyway.... Problem with bunnin wood is, having somewhere to split, stack & dry the stuff. My garden is full of piles of split logs of all-sorts.... a tree-surgeon pal drops off the odd chopped tree on my driveway, now & again..... Best investment I've Made recently is 200 pension-quids' worth of small hydraulic log splitter. Wielding a 4 foot long axe was getting a bit too energetic at my age. The pleasures of living in a rural village, I suppose?

Apparently Labradors are also good at smouldering?

Didn't the genny companies have t fire up a coal fired power station recently, to cover a shortfall in power needs? Given the rate of Ash die-back disease currently rampaging through this country [ I knew there was a reason for me to wear a mask!!]...I am truly surprised we haven't seen all the qualified tree surgeons being contracted to knock em down, log 'em and offer them to folk to burn to keep warm this winter? Oh yes, I forgot, everyone wants push button heating nowadays, don't they? Or , even more techo, control via their smart phones? Just been round a not-too-local Lidls, not much missing at all....but then its a relatively new store, so probably has a priority of deliveries when compared to my local, more rural Lidls? WHich hasn't got any sugar at the moment. Dunno about Tesco or other fancy stores....I stopped using them years ago....

Driver's hours, Working time Directives, etc all conspire to make it difficult for a cat C or C+E licence holder to work the hours necessary to fill the shelves. I sent my Cat C+E back to DVLA when I decided to stop working.....I can still reclaim it without having to re-take a test too...not that I have any issues whatsoever with taking any driving test going..but I wanted to 'remove the temptation'.... I also spent the last 20 years of my working life conducting driver training to the UK military... So, sorry folks, I get my meat from a local farm butcher.....no shortages there, it's all on the hoof in her fields...

Ryedale Clothing? Yorkshire Trading? Both, much-of-a-muchness, in my view [As a local! They're both located in Driffield, which has been my home town now for nearly 5 decades..] Quality can be mixed. However, there is a small ironmongers--country store in Driffield which, I have discovered, has finally arrived in the 21st century! Sells a really good range of proper agricultural stuff [need a decent farm gate? Or the hardware for one? None pf this modern rubbish sold there!] I bought a decent winter coat there 20 years ago...still have it, still failing to wear out! Also same with stuff like decent workmanlike boots. Cash often elicits a discount rounded down.....or used to, but they do take cards now. Proper 1930's old-school service.....Not sure what the distance selling is like, as I'd normally make a personal visit. But its the sort of spot local farmers use. https://www.fwaitesandsons.co.uk/ Proper shop, more like a barn or warehouse..none of this modern plastic frippery here! Barras are decent quality too.

I think one of the reasons why the cars of our era looked bigger, wider, etc, might have been because, on the whole, cars were quite a bit lower than those of today? A bit of an optical illusion going on? A bit like today's cars 'looking ''safer'' to ride in to the average modern motist/car buyer...simply because they have large areas of solid paneling, with smaller window areas [in terms of depth], perhaps? They have an appearance of bulk. This gives a psychological idea of quality & safety. {Ignore the safety technologies for the moment..many of which have been around for many years] Much the same as gluing a coin to the bottom of a plastic cup? { I recall the TV prog that demonstrated this in an experiment....using cups of tea [bags]? A test group of people were given plastic cups of tea to taste. They had to vote on which a they thought tasted the best? Almost without exception they voted for one particular {plastic} cup of tea. With the opinion that the tea was of better quality. What they didn't know at the time was, all the tea was made from the same brand of tea bag......exactly the same. All of it. From the same pot!! The only difference being, one of the plastic cups each was given, had a coin glued to the base of it. It was the glued-coin cup of tea that everyone voted for [almost]... The experiment had nowt to do with tea tasting, and everything to do with psychology. Apparently in our modern society we are all conditioned, subconsciously, to think that 'weight' equals 'quality!' Therefore, the slightly heavier plastic cups of tea must equate to better quality tea. Which is therefore preferable...or so we think? I see the same concept being applied to our cars? The heavier a car looks, the better quality it must be? [Look at Land Rovers, for example??]

Back in the early 1980's/late 70's, I worked for a small rural transport firm for a few years. One type of contract they would bid for and acquire was the delivery of hot school dinners. Many rural schools [primary] didn't have their own fully equipped kitchens, so meals were shipped out from a more 'centrally located' school to the surrounding villages' schools. this also saved on staff wages as the school with the kitchen was the only one to have to employ more or less full time catering staff. the rest simply had the odd one or two, very part time, dinner ladies,to open & serve up the hot school custard, etc. It was our job to provide transport of sufficient size to deliver the hot food containers....sealed things made of aluminum, probably similar to what the military used? About two foot six long, and about 18 inches square in profile.....we had to carry, often 8 or 9 of these things, laid flat, of course....and only one way up, please! Main vehicle we used was a Victor 101 estate. [Although sometimes a 1500 Allegro estate was substituted]. Failing that, mark1 diesel Transit minibus, if nowt else available [ Mark 1 diesel transits, rebodied with scrapped mark 2 transit bus bodies..to keep up with the times...same old clattery bus, different clothes!] Quite a long journey, done in specific order, as the schools had dinner breaks at different times to allow for deliveries. Had to ensure the right boxes went to the right schools...couldn't allow one school to have a surfeit of custard, could we? Never really had any problems, as I recall? Even with snow & ice on the country roads [all country lanes, none of this main road stuff...if there were white lines down the middle, we were likely on the wrong road?]

Thanks for that! Yet another 5 minutes googling! I'll never get the grass cut at this rate! I'm glad some folk [who know, I suspect?] have identified a phenomena I have suspected exists for years now. I am not a psycho {logist] but , in my last work environment [job, some would say? Revenge, is what I say!]...I strongly believed that being able to answer the question 'why?', and trying to understand 'why' folk do what I observed they do on a regular basis...helped me to get across ideas and concepts successfully. The Dunning-Kruger effect is so typified in an aspect of daily life, IE, driving?

I have been plagued by pop-up [google] adverts appearing and blocking the screen, when I click on the various forum shortcuts. Not just the ''unread content' icon, but the messages icon, and even, going though the main menu! This happens on the initial usage, and disappears after the 2nd or 3rd use of these shortcuts. Very annoying indeed, as the ads have to be physically 'closed' in order to continue. On a PC using Windows 10, and the latest iteration of Chrome. Come to think about it, there was a recent microsoft [windows] update, and subsequently my online baking has an issue with a bank fraud notice being slow to load, causing a failure of the login process. I complained to my bank about it..as it followed one of their 'maintenance' episodes. More of less dismissed as being 'my' current version of Chrome's fault. But it happens on the other platforms as well. So I wonder if some of the glitching is down to updates?

I note something of a concern regarding anti-vaxxers? Or rather, simply, non-vaxxers? I noted some 'family' friends, who are aged somewhere in the low 60's...are quite determined not to have a vaccination. They both contracted covid-19 recently. Whilst both suffered to a greater or lesser degree, they remained at home. They now claim to have 'recovered!' Knowing [from my past life when 'working'] how people tend to 'learn', or not, from their experiences.....I wonder if surviving a modest bout of covid will reinforce their views on vaccines? I wonder if they sit at home , not understanding ''what all the fuss has been about?'' Or will they consider themselves 'lucky' to have escaped the consequences of their 'attitudes?' Knowing them to be the sort of people who relish in 'going against the flow'....will relative survival not reinforce their views on the whole matter?

The BMW CS coupe on the Autocar cover? My old [younger than me] GP [doctor, not fancy-pants racer]...some years ago had a decent BMW CS coupe of the same age.....it was in a somewhat lurid metallic green colour. He reckoned it came in that colour.... I recall being called in for a 'check-up, and exchanging a week's sick leave for a spare BMW starter motor.... On the topic of 'sizes,', I have mentioned before, but my '67 Ford Mustang coupe is slightly shorter, and slightly narrower, than the latest Ford Mondeo...yet is a full [?} 11 inches wider inside. As a result, any passengers I may carry are almost at full social distancing from me, their driver.

The bus may not have passengers on? [he ''Stop'' sign isn't extended]. From the photo itself, the comments section