WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Stanley]

Doc called in yesterday and we had a good natter.... Nice. He's looking a bit tired, too busy!

[EileenDavid]

Poor Doc stop working too hard. Seeing the car needs defrosting Eileen

[Stanley]

The floods in Somerset. Thinking about Tiz and friends in Monmouth.

[EileenDavid]

The fact that our membership have donated the target of £200 to let the site carry on with 2 months to spare. Do we start a new donation strategy in February? Eileen

[Bodger]

Not sure if this link is in the right area, its genealogy & history refering to what work life was like in the early 1900s
http://robertfletcherpapermill.weebly.com/

[Tizer]

The floods in Somerset. Thinking about Tiz and friends in Monmouth.

Thanks Stanley - more here: http://www.oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk/view ... 956#p28956

[Bodger]

re. my previous post, go to "home"on the link, Beatrice Dewhurst, died in an industrial accident, payment offered £10.00 !.
how times change, you can now get £ 250.000 for slander

[Stanley]

Eileen, Doc will reset the donor bar early in 2013.
On another matter. I've been watching the excavations in Butts with interest. Evidently there was a blockage in a surface water drain, the one that seems to serve the drainage in Church Street and possibly beyond. They've filled in the two holes they dug and if you are observant you'll see that we have a new manhole on the junction of Butts with Commercial Street. The intriguing thing is the depth of the drain. The drain is about 12 feet down where the manhole is. Normally, with an old drain this can be explained by the ground having been raised since it went in but in this case that seems unlikely. So, I have an intriguing puzzle, why was the drain so deep when it was installed? All right, I'm a nosey bugger and who cares anyway as long as it is functioning, but these matters puzzle me and I like answers!

[Tripps]

The fact that at the Rolling Stones concert last night, they were unable to play the last number due to a strict 11.00pm music curfew at the venue.

Not very rock and roll.

[Thomo]

Stanley, the drains location suggest that the depth involved is to carry away water/waste from the bottom of Walmsgate, just an idea. Big ground rise inbetween.

[Tizer]

This caught our attention - the view when you walk down our lane and look out where it crosses the moor (photo by Mrs Tiz). That's the lane, running away from the camera, with the flooded fields and willow on either side. In the old days they planted the willows along the lane sides and kept them tidy and pollarded because the lanes were always flooded in winter. The lines of willows indicated where you could wade across or ride your horse safely - move beyond the willows and you'd plunge into the deep side ditches, be swept away and drown.

[Stanley]

Peter, not very likely as it's surface water and in Walmsgate it's easy to get rid of into Gillians Beck, in those days it was an open ford.
Tiz, a watery prospect! Is your leccy via an overhead line? It's things like that that would worry me. Think of the number of septic tanks that have been overwhelmed...
I heard the man from Floodwatch on R4 over the weekend, funny thing is he lives on a flood plain in Cambridgeshire... One would have thought he'd have had more sense!
While I am not dismissing the damage and inconvenience to those who have suffered flooding, I found myself thinking last night what a gift flooding is to the media and wondered what the actual proportion is of properties affected. There's no doubt that this is a severe weather pattern but there will be lots of places like Barlick where the affects are nil. Dead easy to send a helicopter out or plant a reporter in flood water and get good footage cheap. By the way, did you see the fire brigade pumping to save the hospital that had a beck running underneath it in a culvert? My first thought was who sited it there and why isn't the culvert big enough to give a safety factor? Not expensive to put a bigger pipe in while building. I have in mind Junction 24 on the Motorway at Ellenroad. They sized the culvert under the junction on historic information and it's not big enough to take even a 50 year event on the River Beal. In addition the design has a dividing wall in the entrance, just the thing to catch a fallen tree and start a blockage. Not a lot of foresight..... Any decisions I made like that at Ellenroad were based on doubling worst case. Dirt cheap to overbuild elements like that when you're starting from base. I was sometimes questioned but always said that one day in the future someone would look at whatever it was and say "That bloke was making sure he was OK!" Far better than having a bum culvert!

[Big Kev]

Tory MP and GP Phillip Lee made a striking call this morning for patients suffering from lifestyle-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes to pay for their prescriptions as part of a larger shake-up of the NHS.

Does this numpty have conclusive proof that all type 2 diabetes cases are "lifestyle" related? Who will make the decision that the condition was caused by a "lifestyle" choice?

[EileenDavid]

I have three brothers and a cousin with type 2 diabetes all of which were over weight but not obese then again my grandfather was diabetic so it's possibly hereditary. One of my brothers has just been diagnosed diabetic recently after taking statins for 3 years. I read somewhere that some statins can cause type 2 diabetes so I'm with you Kev and maybe they should look closer to home when prescribing statins willy nillie. I do however think Tory MP and GP Phillip Lee are getting at are the obese as my understanding is the main source of diabetes, i.e. lifestyle and these are the ones who are draining the NHS. Eileen

[Tizer]

A few interesting figures caught my attention (no, I'm talking numbers, not glamour!)...
The Manchester Ship Canal used to have its own railway which had 70 (seventy!) rail locomotives and 2700 wagons. Six-wheel wagons (probably tank wagons) had to have the steel flange ground off the centre wheels because the curves were so tight on the company's track. Some big `mental' hospitals had their own railway to bring in coal for the boiler and the one at Southampton Water even had a passenger station.

Did you see the TV footage of the flooded railway line where the ballast and foundation had been washed away and the track was suspended `in thin air'? I think it was Exeter and might have been the main line from Paddington because I know that line had to be closed. Now, a question for any railway men out there - when the track can get flooded way out in the country, even on the remote moors, how does the rail company know when it's happened so they can shut the line? If it's done with remote sensing nowadays, how was it done in the bad old days?

[Wendyf]

My feelings on that exactly Big Kev. My hubby has type 2, but has never been overweight in his life. My father in law died from the disease and my sister in law is suffering from complications now.

[Tizer]

The NHS page on Type 2 diabetes is here: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Diabetes-t ... auses.aspx
It is not simply one disease - there are at least two types, one in which not enough insulin is produced and the other in which the body doesn't react properly to insulin. So that's one reason why you can't lump everyone together. Then there is the confusion between risks and causes - for instance being overweight increases the risk of getting it but that doesn't mean overweight causes it. Unfortunately the media garble the message and even the doctors and health advisers get confused. Not surprising then that politicians are confused too. And `lifestyle-related' is a vague term which could be applied to lots of diseases. Athletic types are likely to wear out their joints and get arthritis - should they have to pay towards treatment? Those who spend more time outdoors are statistically at greater risk of skin cancer so should they pay extra? Where does it end?

[Whyperion]

Tizer , for railway washouts I would guess a mixture of , failed track circuits ( not certain when they were first introduced ) , early morning inspection trains , and linemen walking the line ( the number of these would depend on the probability of a potential line problem , so some would walk a larger stretch once a day , others smaller length twice a day ). Oldish web page , thanks to Tiscali's sucessors making it difficult (impossible?) to log in to change details , but a good introduction http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/2-track/02track5.htm. Of course in many cases signal blocks were shorter and more manual boxes so communications would have been fairly straightforward [ there are long remote single track areas which disprove this , I would imagine a lineman would have four red flags available and a supply of detonators to warn of an impassable section of line.

[Tripps]

Last evening I could not access the site for quite a while.
Today all is well, and when I call up threads with lots of pictures, I don't get the error message any more, and am taken straight to the latest picture.
Is there a connection? If so - well done.

[Stanley]

Tiz, in the old days the 'platelayers' walked their section of track each day. I think the same requirement exists today, the track has to be examined but not sure how. Remember the crash on the Tebay line?
Kev and Bodge, I wondered the same thing but I think Dr Lee was probably thinking of more extreme examples like drink and drugs. One thing he mentioned was that patients need to be more stoical. I can sympathise with that point of view but in this modern world we have been brainwashed into thinking the doctors can cure anything. The days of widespread self-medication are gone as far as the younger generations are concerned.
Manchester police confirming that Cyril Smith was an abuser. This was 'common knowledge' in Rochdale but never officially acknowledged even though the evidence was there. Times have changed and Big Cyril joind the bishop etc. Good!

[Big Kev]

I wondered the same thing but I think Dr Lee was probably thinking of more extreme examples like drink and drugs.

He may well have been but the first "disease" mentioned, in the news report, was diabetes. Unfortunately all type 2 diabetics are lumped together...

[Bruff]

I suppose I'm different from the likes of Dr Lee.

I'm quite happy to have programmes designed to stop people smoking, drinking to excess, eating healthily and all the other preventive measures we can take to avoid certain medical conditions. But sad to say, no matter how much we may do this there will still be those who end up with terminal lung cancer, liver failure and yes diabetes. And it's here my terrible human compassion kicks in and no matter that these people may be the agents of their own misfortune, this compassion means I'm quite willing to ease the suffering of a fellow person in distress. At this stage, they are beyond any judgment of their deservedness with regards treatment. And as Tizer notes, if we are in the business of deciding on the deserving and underserving sick, where does it all end?

Richard Broughton

[Big Kev]

What confuses me is why, if you are registered as a diabetic, you receive a medical exemption card for ALL prescription medication. Surely it would be easier just to make specific medications exempt from payment.

[Tardis]

As someone with a condition more prevalent than diabetes, and yet not allowed free prescriptions, I would simply like a level playing field and I don't really care where the line is drawn.

My condition is not life style caused

[Tripps]

On a day when the news is all about the evils of alcohol, and proposed minimum pricing, I've just cashed in some of my Tesco clubcard vouchers. Twelve bottles from the "Finest" range, gross cost £94.88. But then it's buy two for twelve pounds so that knocks £22.88p off. Then it's 25% discount if you buy at least six bottles, so that's another £23.72 off, and finally I double the value of my £25's worth of coupons which makes them worth £50. Result nothing to pay. They even credited the whole £50 even though only £48.28 was due.
"Every little counts" as they say!
In stark contrast I read that the Coop dividend has been reduced by 50% to 0.5p per point.