THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Big Kev]

Did exceptional attendance take into account those children who were ill?

[Stanley]

Can't remember Kev. I doubt it because that would complicate matters verifying they were ill.

[Stanley]

My mother was Chapel but believed in hedging her bets. She put me in the choir at St Martin's church and in the Sunday School at Wycliffe Congregational church on George's Road in Stockport (above). This was one of the first Sunday Schools in the world and was incredible old fashioned. That's why I got a prize for 99% score in the annual scripture examination. I think they had high hopes for me for a while....
I'm glad I went because it opened my mind to the Bible and it never left me. I used to work for a man who would have liked to be a priest and he used to get very upset when I quoted the Bible at him!
My question is, does Sunday school still exist or is it Flatley Dryer country?

[Tizer]

The following photos show Flatley Dryer country - just look at the elfin safety issues! They show work going on in the 1950s at Stonehenge. At bottom right of the magazine's front cover photo there's a man standing on the top of a trilithon and in the other photo there's four men up on top, one wearing his trilby and a mac. The man in white has his pipe in his mouth as he inspects the stone.

[Stanley]

I've seen those pictures somewhere else Peter and the thing that struck me was the two men guiding the stone down on to the uprights. I'm afraid that any operation involving heavy weights and cranes would look the same today.



This is in America in 1912 but exactly the same scene could be seen on any UK dock at that time and right through to the 1960s when things started to change slowly.

[Stanley]

It looks as though concern about the ethnicity of labour isn't a new thing. Perhaps the government needs to start advertising like this!
Later, SPOOKY. I've just been listening to the head of DFDS the logistics company recommending that government starts training programmes for seafarers as the current staff are ageing fast.

[Stanley]

I've done my food shopping for the week and have enough food in to see me through nicely. I look at how we are managing our farming and accepting growing imports of food while the world gradually gets more unstable in terms of weather and wonder when we will shift into looking at today's plenty as Flatley Dryer country. I remember what it was like in WW2 and I'm sure that we are heading for a similar situation but much worse. I forecast that it won't be long before the government will be forced to address this matter. At the moment they (and we) are living in a fool's paradise.

[Stanley]

Many years ago when I was on the tramp and wending my way through Lincolnshire I saw a field being hoed by hand, I counted 15 people at work, slowly advancing across the very large field. I remember thinking at the time that this would become a rare sight.
That happened and the local labour was replaced by imported seasonal labourers from countries with lower wage rates than us. That too has become a Flatley Dryer event.
What happens now?

[Stanley]

Fishing boats in Mallaig harbour around 1950. This is Flatley Dryer country now. First the problem was over-fishing, then over regulation and now over politicised. Have you ever seen anything worse managed than this?

[Stanley]

A horse tethered outside the Co-op Central building in Albert Road in September 1977. Popping to the Co-op on a horse was quite normal then.... That's Flatley Dryer now.

[Stanley]

I remember during my days on the tramp making a delivery at a printing works, I can't remember where it was exactly but it was Warrington/Wirral area. I found that they only had one major contract, making the cardboard boxes for Persil, in fact they may have been owned by Unilever. What really impressed me was that they had examples of every package they had made since early in the 20th century. I wonder if they still exist, if they do they should be preserved as part of our social history. Have a look at THIS Wikipedia entry. I was surprised to find it wasn't a British product!
I still see some washing powders sold in large cardboard boxes for the hotel trade but in the main this form of packaging is becoming Flatley Dryer country.

[Stanley]

Many years ago I used to deliver bagged bone meal, ground hoof and horn, dried blood and muck from broiler chicken houses to Preston Farmers at Preston. Innocent that I was I thought they were all for the horticultural businesses on the Fylde. I found later that they were all used in making cattle cake as they were protein sources and raised the analysis. This surfaced when BSE became a problem and it was found that protein from sheep infected with Scrapie (LINK) had been included and the cattle were infected. That's right, 'Mad Cow Disease'.
Hopefully that's Flatley Dryer territory now but I think about the miracle factories where we used to repair boilers which took in out of date cheese and converted it to Mozzarella for pizzas, out of date fats and oils became 'baker's shortening' with a shelf life of six months, butcher's waste was rendered and became lard and 'protein granules' for use in pet foods. How many of these are still in business?
Be very careful what you buy and eat. If you can't be certain it has none of the above ingredients, don't eat it.

[Stanley]

This morning's Flatley Dryer example might be an illusion....
"The bobby or killing calf trade was an entirely different kettle of fish. I’ve touched on it before but it’s time we had a closer look. If there was one aspect of the cattle trade that disturbed me it was trading in calves only a few days old. Officially, you weren’t allowed to present a calf for sale if the navel was still wet, in other words, under a day or two old but we often saw them being sold in this condition. These calves were condemned to death as soon as they were taken from their mother because they hadn’t had enough time on ‘beast milk’ or colostrum, the first milk the cow gives which is loaded with natural anti-bodies and nutrients, to give them a proper start in life. This didn’t matter because their destination was slaughter anyway. In those days they ended up with the big canning firms like Heinz and Crosse & Blackwell where they were slaughtered and rendered down for stock for baby and geriatric foods.
There was a coterie of dealers who specialised in this trade and they could be seen at Ayr and Lanark gathered in the ring in a solid bunch for the ‘killing calf’ sale which was immediately after the rearers had been sold. The calves would be pushed between their legs and they would bid for them. To an unenlightened observer this could be seen as market forces at play but in effect it was anything but a ‘market’, it was a ‘ring’. None of the dealers would pay much because there was no competition, they took turns to bid for the calves. After the sale they would gather and reckon up the average price of the calves and split them up between them, in this way they kept the prices low and gave themselves more profit when they sold them on. Everybody knew about this but it was very hard to prove, even harder to stop and basically nobody was very interested because the animals were disposable items anyway.
On the way up to Lanark one day, David told me to keep an eye on the killers if I had a chance because there was going to be a bit of an upset. In the course of his Cheshire dealings he had come across a bloke called John Denson who had seen an advertisement in the Farmer’s Weekly for a man to buy calves on commission. He almost ignored the advert because he knew it was a license to print money and was sure that there would be hundreds of applicants. The deal was that someone was wanted to go into the market and buy calves and for every pound he spent he would get a shilling commission, these might not have been the exact figures but you can see the idea. Eventually he decided he might as well apply as he had nothing better to do and to his amazement, got the job, he was the only qualified applicant!
The firm who had put the advert in was one of the major food manufacturers. They had a problem which was that their supply of calves had dried up because other manufacturers had penetrated the ring and persuaded them to sell to them exclusively. The calves were an essential part of the process so they had to be obtained and if it meant investing money to break the ring, so be it.
On this particular Monday, John Denson was starting his campaign in Lanark and as far as we were aware nobody knew he was going to be there. David and I lurked at the back of the ring as the dealers took up their customary places in the ring. David pointed the bloke out to me, he was sitting on the rail of the sale pen, not bothering to get into the crush of dealers but in a position where he had direct line of sight to the auctioneer’s eye. He had a fag in his mouth, he wore a ratting hat, a tweed jacket, a Tattersall check shirt and a tie-pin with a fox on it. Typical country gent, no threat to anyone!
The first calf was pushed into the forest of legs in the middle of the ring and got to about five bob (25p), the auctioneer didn’t waste time and was just going to knock it down when a bid of ten bob came from the back, John had struck the first blow. You could see all the shoulders in the ring hunch and then everyone turned to see where the bid had come from. As it was an unheard of price, the auctioneer dropped the hammer and it was Denson 1, Dealers 0. The next calf came in and the same price and result. After a couple more calves went down to Jack it became clear that the dealers were getting their act together, they drove the price of the calf up to thirty shillings but John still took it. They had another stab with the next one but when it got to three pounds, John let them have it. At this point he had taken every calf bar one and the price that had been paid for this one would have bought ten average calves a week earlier. The sale went on like this, John paid up to five pounds for a calf and dropped the dealers in for some at very nearly this price. As far as the dealers were concerned this was a disaster and they had no idea who the opposition was. Remember also that the markets weren’t naïve. A buyer acting outside the normal pattern like this wouldn’t have been entertained as a bidder unless the management were absolutely certain he was sound. David and I were sure that Jack had been in to see the auctioneers and persuaded them he was kosher before the sale, probably by putting a bond down.
The word had soon got round the market and farmers were coming down into the calf section to see the miracle that was taking place. Men who had ten calves in the sale and would have expected fifty bob were seeing their animals sold for over fifty quid! It was drinks all round time. Remember that the market was doing OK as well. If the price of calves rose 1000% so did their commission! The only people who weren’t happy were the dealers because they had no calves except for grossly expensive ones. No doubt they retired to the bar to think this one over, they weren’t daft and knew something serious was happening.
Next day at Ayr the same thing happened but this time the calves were better. Farmers had twigged what was happening and poor to average rearing calves were being sold as killers because they would make more money. By the end of the week John’s firm had a good supply of expensive calves but the opposition had nothing. End of round one.
This went on for about three weeks and during that time John was threatened with violence but in the end the dealers had to sit down with him and come to an agreement. I don’t know if they knew who was behind it but they didn’t need to, all they could see was that they were up against an opposition that had a deep pocket, was totally ruthless and would put them out of business unless some agreement was reached. The upshot was that John went back to his quiet life in Cheshire, lessons were learned and the division of available bobby calves went back on to a more equable footing. Our entertainment stopped but it had been instructive and interesting while it lasted!
This intervention cured the imbalance in calf distribution but did nothing to improve the trade. I have no evidence but common sense dictates that the expenses of getting the calves to slaughter would be kept as low as possible and it grieves me to think of what those poor little rejects went through during the next two or three days. It can be a cruel world and I often wonder what mothers would have thought as they fed their tots on Beef dinners if they had known what was going on. This of course is the reason why nobody ever talks about shameful trading practices like these."

That's a description of what was happening fifty years ago. Things may have changed but there are still bobby calves in the system and something must be done with them. One thing is certain, nobody is doing a lot of shouting about it. I suspect there is still a hidden cruel trade there and so this might not be a genuine Flatley Dryer case.

[Stanley]

A similar situation to that of the bobby calves is the way the greyhound racing industry deals with dogs whose short careers are over. At one time they were just shot and buried. There was a case a few years ago of a prosecution of a man in Ireland who had shot hundreds of dogs but I can't remember the outcome. Those dogs are still there, I wonder what happens to them now......

[Stanley]

We look at advertisements like this for laudanum based 'pacifiers' for children and congratulate ourselves that we no longer use drugs to keep kids quiet. But are we sure? I am told that some children's remedies for teething and coughs are soporific in effect and there is a suspicion that in some cases this is what they are used for.
Then there is the murky area of the routine dosing of old people in some care homes to 'keep them quiet'. These old remedies my not be quite as Flatly Dryer as we assume.

[Stanley]

It's 1982 and we have a proper ironmonger's shop on the corner with Newtown, opposite what was the Midland Bank. I don't think that any of us could have imagined the changes that were coming. John's shop morphed into a tanning salon and the bank shuffled off the scene, the building had a brief spell as a bookies but now stands empty as an asset on somebody's books. Both are Flatley Dryer country.

[PanBiker]

and the bank shuffled off the scene, the building had a brief spell as a bookies but now stands empty as an asset on somebody's books. Both are Flatley Dryer country.

The former Midland bank is one of 600 properties in the portfolio of the group that now own it. We offered a realistic price for it at the going rate for the state of the building but they will not sell it.

There should be laws against land and property banking. Owners should have time limits imposed for redevelopment or disposal.

[Stanley]

Yes, I remember you telling us that a while since. I agree with you Ian, Using a fine building in the middle of the town as a piece on a Monopoly board should not be allowed. The same goes for the other bank on Church Street.
Leaving them empty is an affront to the people who have to live with the eyesore (for that is what an empty building is) and should be regarded as such by the law.

[Stanley]

This is a modern lobster back chimney cowl. At one time they were very common as roof ventilators. Most of them much bigger and more complicated than this one. They became Flatley Dryer country because they could not be mass produced, only made by hand. I am lucky enough to have been able to watch a proper tinsmith, Les at REW, make a big ventilator from scratch. You wouldn't believe the complicated shapes that had to be cut out to produce the bend. The one in the illustration is very simple, some of the old ones had dozens of segments....

[Stanley]

This morning's example of a Flatley Dryer topic is the War Agricultural Committees system that controlled agricultural output during WW1 and were reinstated in 1939 for the duration of the Second World War. (LINK)
I know they operated in Barlick because my mate Danny Pateman worked for them during the war. They had the power to direct farmers how to manage their land and this involved ploughing up a lot of permanent pasture. Farmers hadn't the equipment to do this and so the 'War Ag' as it was called acted as contractors and supplied the men and the equipment. That was what Danny was doing.
All this came to mind when I was thinking about the crazy phenomenon we are seeing where, in order to create 'carbon credits' (Which are agreed by all to be a scam and an illusion) good agricultural land is being sterilised as far as productive agricultural is concerned by planting trees. This is madness in our position as importers of 60% of our food.
So the War Ags are Flatley Dryer country but should be brought back now. At the moment the politicians have totally abandoned the farmers because they don't understand food production. Exactly the same position we were in in the late 1930s. They had to learn lessons quickly then and it will happen again.



The Woman's Land Army in WW1 was an offshoot of the War Ags and they too were reinstated in 1939.

[Stanley]

Have a look at THIS Wikipedia article on the Civil Defence Corps established by the government in 1949 under threat of possible attack during the Cold War. It was a well organised body and well equipped. (The Green Goddess fire engines that were regularly rolled out during strikes were originally CD equipment.)
The CDC was stood down in 1968 and became Flatley Dryer country. The reason it has come to mind is that under our present threats, it could be a good time to revive the CDC or something very much like it. This will not happen for a very stupid reason, to do so would be to admit the gravity of the situation we are moving towards and that isn't government policy! They will keep their heads buried in the sand until time has run out.



Lytham St Annes CDC in 1953.

[Tizer]

Mrs Tiz's father joined the Civil Defence Corps after he finished university and worked for Proctor & Gamble on soap manufacture. She remembers him getting out his uniform to attend the CDC meetings etc. Somewhere I have a Government pamphlet on nuclear war that must have been distributed to them at the time. His father hadn't been in the military - he was a chemical engineer keeping the water and sewage systems working during WW2. His father-in-law was also in a protected occupation, an engineer building and maintaining the tunnels and other infrastructure for the ammo depots in Wiltshire that stored and supplied it to the Royal Navy in Portsmouth docks.

[Stanley]

I can remember some people having CDC vehicles at home and what I believe to be closely related , the 'Buffer Depots' that were scattered round the country. Have a look at THIS website for some interesting and credible looking information. I remember the site at Longtown from my driving days. Rows of bunkers stretching out to the horizon. (PS. The bit about one site being 'contaminated' is a bit worrying!)

[Tizer]

I was amused by this sentence at the end of the linked Daily Record article...
“Any future development will, of course, be tempered by contamination on the site. Although this may be a limiting factor, it does not mean that exciting opportunities cannot be realised.”
Exciting opportunities? Such as...explosions?...radiation?...toxic chemical leaks?...deadly bacteria and viruses?...
Count me out!

[Stanley]

Quite! One wonders what is being kept from us on the grounds it's best we don't know....