Willie Whizz

I had similar reservations, but for once I was pretty well satisfied with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which seemed well-visualised and told to me, even to the extent that much of what they left out was pretty weak or irrelevant stuff in the books anyway (Tom Bombadil et al); the only serious omission being most of the “Scouring of the Shire”. I can’t say the same for The Hobbit, which stretched and padded what would barely have justified two films into three. My biggest disappointment in this line in recent years was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which would have been a passable (but no more) film in its own right - but although telling broadly the same story was emphatically not the ”film of the book”.

Yes, I’ve seen the stage adaptation of War of the Worlds twice, once with the Burton narration and once with Neeson. They were both seriously good. I had wondered what the tangle of “scaffolding” above the stage was all about, thinking it must be part of a very elaborate lighting and special effects rig. When it started to pour out smoke, slowly descend and transform into the Martian Fighting Machine, the whole arena crowd, several thousand strong, gave an audible collective gasp …

What baffles us with our Samsung TV with Sky dish is that when watching “ordinary” programmes in real-time the sound volume is fine if set around 20. But watching a recorded programme needs turning-up to about 28-30 to be satisfactory, and using our connected DVD player means having to go right up to a volume setting of 40. Weird. I suppose I might be able to find a rationale and a remedy in the Instruction Manual - except that these days all you seem to get is a Quick Start guide …

Although I didn’t actually buy it, it was seeing the then-new Mainline 4MT in a shop window next-door to Lady Whizz’s place of employment that first re-ignited my childhood interest in model railways. There was just such a vast difference in appearance and realism to anything I’d ever seen from Hornby etc.

Well, since nobody else has said anything - I went, and I enjoyed it!

Unfortunately, by the mid-1960s, in both defence and transport too many over-ambitious and poorly-focused hi-tech projects were chasing too little remaining money to fulfil them properly.

There is a price to pay for that relatively high income Dentists enjoy though, it seems. Apparently a study in 2011 found that 7.18% of dentists commit suicide compare to the general population of 0.42%, making it over 17 times more likely that a dentists will commit suicide. I'm not perhaps the World's biggest fan of the medical profession in general, it's true, but statistics like that do give you pause for thought ...

The “reluctance to pay” is in good measure, I think, precisely because the original promise was that it would indeed be “free”, and that promise was soon broken, and the resentment has passed down the generations even though we no longer quite recall why. And of course because it never was “free” in the first place - only “free at point of use”. Every taxpayer pays for the NHS, including the missing elements over and above the dentists’ fees, not just for themselves but for those who cannot pay. So we feel, consciously or subconsciously, that we have “paid” already. And if you go private, there is no tax rebate despite you saving the NHS the cost of pretty much everything except A&E services.

That Gannet looks a beauty … but on following the link it amused me to see that a majority of the paints required to complete it are shown as “out of stock”!

Thank you for clarifying - evidently I was not the only one who took what you were saying incorrectly. But in regard to your last post, I did also point out that some names are deliberately mis-spelled, so it was at least possible your Club had had a “deliberately incorrect” sign for years which the sign writer had, unaware, “corrected”. Anyway, as has been said, ‘storm in a teacup’, so let’s move on.

Not the place for a full-scale debate on naval history, but worth mentioning that Cradock’s orders were confused and contradictory (some say Winston Churchill as 1st Lord of the Admiralty was meddling again). When the armoured cruiser Defence, which had been promised him as a reinforcement and should have been at very least the equal of one of the big German ships) was diverted elsewhere, he got the clear impression his courage was being called into doubt. Knowing the old battleship Canopus creeping up to join him, rather than a ‘citadel’ around which he should supposedly concentrate, was actually a cripple with less firepower and armour than a modern armoured cruiser, he seems to have believed that when the German squadron turned-up, the Admiralty reckoned he was both equipped and expected to go up against them. With the example of Troubridge’s failure fresh in his mind, he did so. Of course unlike Byng, Troubridge did technically get off, partly on the grounds (again) of ambiguities in his orders, though his promising career was ruined. But many in the Navy felt the true villain of the piece was his Flag Captain, Fawcett Wray, who in the depths of a dark night poured weasel-words into his ear and persuaded him the odds of four middle-aged cruisers taking-on a modern battle cruiser were too great, even in an ambush. A generation later, at the 1939 Battle of the River Plate, three British cruisers in similar circumstances showed what could have been done, and their Commodore was promoted and knighted. A sad story …

That was the way I interpreted your wording, I’m afraid.

Wow, that should be an interesting read! FWIW I’d agree that there’s at least an arguable case that Byng made a convenient scapegoat; certainly executing him went a bit further than the usual precedents for such failure. But that was “justice” in the 1750s … It wouldn’t be the last case of ‘political interference’ in the aftermath of a naval battle either - as recently as World War II there are indications Winston Churchill in 1940-41 wanted to court-martial Admirals. Somerville, Wake-Walker and Tovey, the latter two in connection with the Bismarck chase, and had to be talked out of it once the full facts and rationale for their decisions were known. All have good reputations today still, thankfully. Conversely the Byng and Troubridge precedents (the latter especially, as it was so very recent) are thought to lie as a significant factor behind why Adm. Cradock in late 1914 took his antiquated and outgunned cruiser squadron into action off Coronel in Chile against the German admiral, Graf von Spee, when realistically he stood no chance and probably knew it. Hundreds died and precisely nothing was achieved. But ‘honour’ was saved; whatever else might be said, no-one ever criticises him for lack of bravery.

No, just a student of naval history as my “other hobby”. But that’s the chap all right! And it has to be said, it worked - for the next 200 years or so, aggressive tactics characterised the conduct of Royal Navy admirals and captains, even when the numbers were against them and it might have been more appropriate to be more reticent against hefty odds. I’m only aware of one actual subsequent Court Martial of an admiral for over-caution (Troubridge, 1914) - the precedent was enough. The really annoying thing, though, is that if Byng had done his job properly then Menorca might still be a British colony and we could be holidaying there without having to change currencies or learn pidgin-Spanish!

Why things were done differently in days gone by (if I remember correctly!).