Reorte

It's a billion times bigger (accepting that the US version of "billion" is now the established one), unless you're limiting the word "bigger" to physical dimensions, which obviously doesn't make much sense for a unit of power.

How did I miss this post?! Carrock Mine I assume? Think that's the Canadian Crosscut? It's one I've never been down personally, alas. I used to be involved with the MOLES quite a bit, spent a fair time on the Yewthwaite dig. Anyway apologies for dragging up a two and a half year old post to reply to.

Sorry, sore point. Let's move on!

And I find them bloody awful out of place monstrosities to look at and find the sight of them in the numbers there are very depressing - to me they're no more appealing than any other industrial installation of equivalent size, most of which aren't in such numbers in such prominent locations. You can certainly say that they're necessary despite that, but to dismiss "they look awful" as silly just because you're OK with them is to claim to be the arbiter of what is and isn't silly based on your own preferences. Attacking people with opinions you (generic, not directing this at you personally) is all too common. I suppose you don't have to worry about upsetting people if you can convince yourself that they're fools for being upset by things you like. I agree on the noise though, only time I've noticed noise from one is when I've been almost underneath it.

"Some people called the Romans, they go the house?"

A very interesting read, thanks. I'm just picking up on this one point because I've seen a fairly convincing defence of the patronage system (at least in slightly earlier times than this - by this point I think class snobbery was playing a bigger role). Underlying it was a requirement for being a good sailor - sailing a sailing ship was a very technical, skilled affair that you needed to start learning young, and it was absolutely essential, which is probably why it never succombed to the sorts of issues the army had (buying commissions). So in order to get the seniority required to push ahead your followers you had to demonstrate that you were capable of producing competent followers. Officers who used their position to further the careers of incompetent cronies didn't get anything from their superiors, who they were embarrassing (at best). Of course it's not a system that always worked, and would overlook good men, but there's certainly a case for it not being as poor as we'd assume today (in terms of outcome of results if not fairness).

Whilst I can't really disagree with that I can't see how it can be made reality either - most of the economic pressures push things in the other direction. It's inevitable when things go wrong those with the least will have the least to cope with the situation, and some people will always slip through the cracks no matter how perfect society is. I'm not defending that situation BTW, and we should be looking at ways of changing it - as you suggest the UK is a wealthy country, no matter what some seem to think, but it keeps pursuing more wealth instead of distribution of wealth. It doesn't really have a problem with the former (total amount) but a big one with the latter. It occasionally works out - Covid-related for example using some of that wealth to get the vaccination programme up and running but without being too concerned about doing so economically efficiently has worked out, but that's very much an exception to the "economic efficiency rules" rule. Normally anyone who isn't concerned with it (pays better wages or pensions than the competition, doesn't try to automate away jobs etc.) will be out-competed and go bust, or at best survive in a small niche market.

Maybe not for factual sources (at least not entirely, when others exist), but they will do when looking at society overall at a given time.

Primary and secondary can be a bit different - not too many parents are happy with letting primary school age children off to school on their own, but are less concerned when they get a bit older.

I've not had that (only got one cat for starters), but I have had mine hurtle to the door as I've opened it to go out, only to skid to a halt when she sees it's chucking it down.

On that part at least I'm not planning on doing anything until Covid's history.

That's the view I took when I was at school, despite the school complaining about pupils removing their ties (nothing worse than that even) when getting on the bus home - was an ordinary service bus, not a school one. Mind you then some of the sixth form pupils were known to head to a pub at lunch, and one of the teachers would ignore that if they bought him a pint when he went in to check. Can't quite see that happening now, even though some of them would've been 18.

Well we're moving on to Welsh narrow gauge, putting together a plan to tour them has been something I've been intending to do for a few years - is it practical to do the whole thing by train? (there's plenty of full size trains there I wouldn't mind a trip on too, e.g. the Conwy Valley line).

Sounds like the closest Highland equivalent is probably the Jacobite then, although that's obviously a somewhat different case to a heritage railway. When I've been on it or just in the area when it's been there it's always seemed packed, and that's running what I assume is the longest train they possibly could.

It's often said that cats can't be trained, but it looks like de-training them isn't very easy either!

Why such a delay? Is that what can happen if a train misses its path by a whisker?

Those sound like the reports which are quite laggy - the fall had definitely slowed to almost stuttering out a week or two ago but appears to have picked up again (in percentage terms rather than absolute numbers). They tend to get picked out as saying what the situation is now, even when there's quite strong evidence that the situation's changed. This can result in caution in relaxing, but go back to that week or two ago and they were cheering on large falls at the time it was looking like it was stuttering.

Thought the whole point of the orange lines was to indicate "don't climb above here."

Looks like the fire had got going before it landed.

Plenty at Llangollen, less at Corwen IIRC but you can go for a pleasant walk and have a bite to eat before getting the train back. Berwyn's a nice stop on the way too, and not too far back to Llangollen to walk back along the canal.

Nothing to say other than I hope it comes out of the other side of this. I've been a couple of times and enjoyed it - always like a pleasant railway in pleasant surroundings.

Oh, that's how it's being done. If I hadn't seen this I'd have probably just seen the envelope, thought "yes, I know there's a census coming up" and chucked it in with the rest of the recycling without looking. Anyway how is the usual "fill it in on paper" method not socially distanced? Seems it's one of the few things that can work as usual.

We're definitely getting in to second jabs now. Looking at the numbers the number of second jabs has increased a great deal in the last week, although it's still much lower than first jabs. That fits in with the timing of getting the vaccination programme going.

Need to be careful with historic life expectancy - a great deal of the increase was from improved childhood mortality rates, rather than the upper end increasing, at least when you go back far enough. Smoking must've been a big contributor throughout most of that graph too. I do very much agree with the previous poster but one on it all being seen as far too black and white these days. Give me a choice and in many cases I'd rather have a bit of pollution than the alternatives quite honestly, and if that happens to knock a year or two off my life so be it. But that doesn't mean I want to go back to the smogs either.

When my parents got the jab they chose to wait until they could get it done near to them, even though they'd had had an invite to the regional centre a bit earlier - 100 miles away. To be honest I'd have been tempted to take the longer journey just for a good reason to have a change of scene!