Fenman

There is apparently an agreement which is renegotiated / renewed every 5 years. That is not the action of someone / an institution which is giving up ownership, but instead suggests they have a strong attachment to their property, the disposition of which they wish to keep under control. An actively managed loan, no matter how long it is for or how many times it is renewed, does not give ownership rights to the person to whom it is entrusted. Just as pertinent: who in their right minds from this time on will ever again loan anything to the North Road Museum or Darlington Council? Paul

That seems absolutely fine to me. Vaccination coverage is never 100%, and we are already way above the predicted vaccination levels in almost all the main groups so far (from memory the 80+ age group is over 90% vaccinated, which is staggeringly good). There's room for people to refuse vaccination if they want to provided, of course, they are willing to take on the chin whatever consequences flow from their decision. Equally, the public health people should be using evidence and information to persuade people of the potential benefits they are missing. However, it would intensely annoy me if people who refused to be vaccinated then started arguing that, eg, the rest of us should not have vaccination passports to ease international travel because that would be "discriminatory". I'm less forgiving where parents decide their children shouldn't be vaccinated (or given a life-saving blood transfusion, for example), because it clashes with their own beliefs. But that doesn't really apply here. Paul

Many sites are known — and they’re usually better off just being protected from deep ploughing or construction work (that’s what the last major round of ancient monuments legislation was all about in the 1980s). Scheduled ancient monuments are even more heavily protected than listed buildings. Unknown sites are by definition impossible to deal with until they become known (so you can’t just excavate them to find out what they reveal because they’re unknown...). That’s why it’s now usually a condition of significant planning permission that archaeological investigations must first be undertaken. But those investigations inevitably destroy the site. Unless the site is threatened with destruction, it’s considered less important that we satisfy our own curiosity with today’s inevitably crude techniques than that future generations should have access to the best possible information that the sites can yield. The longer you leave them undisturbed, (usually) the more information you will get. And there’s only a finite number of Iron Age hill forts, Roman villas or Saxon cemeteries. Paul

Actually, no. Every professional archaeologist recognises that excavation is an irreversible and utterly destructive process: you can only excavate a site once. As archaeological techniques improve every year, it is usually much better to leave the remains underground, where they are protected, unless you are obliged to excavate because they are anyway about to be destroyed. "Time Team" gives a largely false impression of archaeological thinking. Paul

Reminds me of the great movie mogul, Sir Lou Grade, commenting on the phenomenal budget overruns of his blockbuster disaster movie, Raise the Titanic: ”Raise the Titanic? It would have been cheaper to lower the bloody Atlantic”. Paul

It is at least probably more feasible (less unfeasible?) than Boris's mad bridge proposal, though. I wonder what the business case would look like... Paul

Even in the medieval period universities were a strange mix of vocational and academic training (the vocation was originally primarily religious), but in recent years there’s certainly been huge pressure to teach for employment, combined with degree-isation of previously FE level professions (nursing is one of the more recent examples). The conversion of polytechnics into universities didn’t help (especially since most of the good polys tended to become 2nd-rate universities). And technical colleges seem to occupy a weird middle ground between being alternative sixth form centres and vocational training centres (and, in some cases, hosting “university centres”, too). I’d agree with you that we have horribly neglected the technical side of education and training — though that’s always been a complaint about the English system (the RSA was loudly lobbying for mechanics institutes in the early nineteenth century, lamenting the appalling state of education and pointing out that Germany was overtaking us...). Until we can agree what education is for, we’re unlikely to develop a coherent system of provision. Paul

An average end-to-end speed of 20mph would be considered a sparkling performance on some 1950s routes: the M&GN’s crack express, “The Leicester” (Yarmouth/Norwich—Lynn—Leicester—Birmingham), struggled to manage that; and almost all their passenger trains had average speeds of less than 20mph, including long-distance trains (Lynn—Nottingham, for instance, which was timetabled to take ~4 hours, while weekend specials showed the same route could easily be managed in half that time). Xpress publishing used to produce series of books with operating data for various routes, which met my geeky needs for detailed information (though I haven’t seen anything from them recently so don’t know if they’re still going). I found their two books on the M&GN routes endlessly fascinating. Paul

But hasn’t that always been the case? Oxford started awarding degrees to lawyers in the 13th century: but over most of those 800 years before qualifying as a professional they’ve also then needed either work experience as a clerk or an apprenticeship in one of the Inns of Court. Similarly with graduates of medical schools: after graduation they need on-the-job experience (plus usually further exams) to qualify as a professional. Why would we suddenly expect universities to start graduating fully-formed professionals? That’s not their job. At most, they offer the equivalent of “Part 1” of a professional qualification. And all that assumes the purpose of universities is vocational training when many (most?) of their graduates are studying subjects they love without a thought of becoming a “professional” in that subject. I think English universities will have a tough time: their primary role is to act as finishing schools for the middle classes, with academic study being one of a number of purposes. The socialising and network-building elements of a traditional university education can’t be done as effectively in a virtual world. Paul

I’m curious that you don’t think the Open University has been graduating engineers for, well, decades...? Paul

An interesting article about the current failures of HE and questioning their future, by the always thoughtful John Naughton (who can draw on many years experience as an academic at the Open University). Paul

It affects many walks of US life. The famous Civil War general, later President, Ulysses S Grant, was famously tone deaf. He explained that that wasn’t true, and he knew not just one song, but two. One of them was Dixie. And the other one wasn’t. Paul

But why wouldn't you?! Paul

That Class 17 looks completely at home on your layout. My only thought was whether a green one might look even more stunning; and it would probably sit more happily alongside the 31. In my view the two-tone green scheme looked its very best on the Clayton (other opinions are available!). Paul

Mine have arrived. Overall verdict at first look: delightful. There's a very pleasing amount of detail, including on the bogies, for an RTR, and the sheer heft of the model is satisfyingly realistic. The cab interior has a nice low floor and some good-looking fittings, such as fine handbrake wheel. Downsides, so far? The weathered version is not great: more like it's been sandblasted all over with a very fine ginger powder, not the sort of oily sheen with strange black stains I would have expected. But factory weathering is almost always poor, and I think this is no exception. The pristine models have a lovely finish. Like all good O gauge, these locos have a real presence. But in addition while they're big enough to take advantage of the scale, they're small enough to have a bit more room to manoeuvre on typical modest-sized O gauge layouts -- where they might therefore look less out of place than a massive mainline loco. After a very quick play, they look very well-matched with Darstaed Mk1 Suburbans. I've been looking forward to these for a long time. So far I'm very pleased. Paul

That's exciting (for me): an email from Hattons that they have just processed my order for Heljan's Claytons. So obviously they have arrived. Hurrah! Paul

Are they part of the group of theatres that are building open-air auditoria, so they can re-open for the summer? A nice article about some of them here. Incidentally, I presume you were being deliberately provocative by referring to Scotland and Wales as "provinces", though it's exactly that sort of English denigration that is fuel to the nationalist fires. They are nations, not provinces. That's why they have their own legal and education systems, etc. Paul

Much (most?) American spelling was introduced by Webster as a deliberate point of differentiation from British English. He was being politically correct (woke?). Much prior to that date and most spelling was anyway very fluid. Johnson’s dictionary was only published in 1755. How many different ways did Shakespeare spell his own name — presumably depending on how the fancy took him? But it’s true that a lot of US dialects are much closer to English regional dialects. And many common English words remained in use in the US but were supplanted in the UK (we all used to say Fall, but the English later decided the French-derived Autumn made you sound posher). Paul

It’s a bit extraordinary that a Swiss train should suffer problems with snow and ice. Paul

Well, yes, except that ... the reason we have a word for “coincidences” is because they do sometimes occur. And correlation is anyway not proof of causation, and all that. Paul

That is such a noble sentiment and, of course, you are completely right. I’m absolutely convinced — and I think it’s true to say that no sane human, seeing all the known facts, could think otherwise — that it was my Great Aunty Violet who was responsible. She’s always been interested in experimental cooking, and she went on a tour to the Great Wall of China just over a year ago. She’d have had plenty of opportunity to plant her evil virus. Right, let’s stop this ever happening again — we need to form a mob. Now, who’s got the pitchforks...? Paul

Or it could be a CIA “Dirty Trick” to discredit China. Or it could be MI6 planting something from Porton Down, in an attempt to destabilise China and distract them from Hong Kong. Or it could be something my Great Aunty Violet cooked up to overcome her boredom after her husband ran off with the next door neighbour. There is as much (or as little) evidence for these as any of the conspiracies so far put forward. But none of them help (unless any of us is a screenwriter indulging in speculative fiction to come up with a new twist). The issue is that millions have got sick (or have tragically died) — and millions more are at risk. I can see how that’s a horrible thing to focus on, and all the possible approaches to managing the pandemic are complicated and mostly involve “least-worst”-type trade-offs which don’t lend themselves to simple black-and-white answers. But evidence-free speculation with a view to establishing who is to blame is, at this stage, the wrong approach. It’s a bit like being in the theatre after President Lincoln has been shot and insisting the correct question is where to go to get the bullet hole in his suit invisibly mended. It’s certainly a question, but perhaps not the most immediately pressing issue. And it distracts from trying to save the guy’s life. (I’m not picking on you Hobby — just a handy way into the issue.) Paul

There are theories, there are speculations, and there are wild ramblings bordering on insanity. Since we are largely in an evidence-free state about the origins, posts on here about Chinese labs are inevitably towards the conspiracy theory end of the spectrum. It's intriguing how our choice of speculative villains goes in cycles: we last had an (irrational) terror of Chinese people about a century ago; although from that "Yellow Peril" hysteria emerged the delightful villain Ming the Merciless, so I guess it wasn't all bad. Paul

Yes, I’m sure it was all part of a Vast Conspiracy. Now, where did I put my tinfoil hat...? Paul

I toyed with a scenario for the M&GN system across Norfolk. It survived Grouping as an independent company, since it was owned 50:50 by companies that were split between the LMS and LNER. For some years they then shared operations, before the LMS deciding out of the blue in the 1930s effectively to gift their 50% to LNER. From that moment I think it was doomed, only WW2 extending its life a little. But suppose instead the two owners had done a deal with the county council? Some of the excessive or hopeless bits might well have been cut anyway (who needed yet another route serving thinly-populated territory between Norwich and Yarmouth? And the Mundesley branch was pretty certain to close). But an interurban passenger service Norwich-Fakenham-Lynn-Peterborough might have been viable (even today there are express double-deckers at least every hour operating exactly that route -- but clogging up Norfolk's hopeless road system and vulnerable to delays). The Norwich-Birmingham railway route was shifted from M&GN lines to a more circuitous ex-GER route, but remains today. So there may have been enough traffic, maybe. It's the best I could come up with. Paul