OneGuyFromBarlick

Ian, I'm glad to hear you've been given the all clear. I don't wish to sound morbid but I'll say this anyway ( ), make sure Sally has a Power of Attorney set up for you in case it's ever needed (and you for her while you're at it). And don't forget a will if you haven't done that. Your experience has reminded me that Mrs Tiz and me need to set up one of the new `lifestyle' PoAs - we have the old style PoA but it only covers financial aspects of care. There are two new PoAs, one for finance and one for lifestyle (which covers health and general care matters). For anyone reading this who doesn't already know, if your loved ones lose the power to look after their own affairs and you haven't already made out a PoA for them you'll have to jump through lots of hoops, pay a lot of money and wait a long time to go to the Courts to get the power. Much, much better to do it in advance even if it's never needed.

Jumping back to topics in my post yesterday...I mentioned the effects of climate change but now find that it's nothing to do with human activity. Obviously the thousands of climate scientists around the world are all wrong. The UKIP Energy spokesman has said so (but admits he's not a scientist). UKIP - the United Kingdom Ignorant Party?

And more on CityLink and the vulture capitalists...Better Capital (what a name!) has announced that it expects to get £20 million from the liquidation of CityLink. With that they could afford to give £10,000 to each worker made redundant!

Heed the warning Ian, and ease back a bit, we need men such as you. Its definitely the end of the Air Asia flight, but what truly pisses me off, is the speed at which the grubby, itchy fingered wheelers and dealers on the world stock markets are dumping on an airline that was doing its best for people in that area. Well done to the Pilot of the Virgin Boeing 747 who got his aircraft down yesterday with the full starboard gear still retracted. British ski holidaymakers were "kicking off" yesterday because their return home was disrupted by snow, what can I say! I am not a fan of "tweet and twitter" texting et al, I have a telephone for calls, a camera for taking pics, and a decent computer, I do not belong to the "must have" brigade and get through life quite well without the gadgetry of today. Having followed the progress of two events over the past two days, the Air Asia Aircraft, and the Greek Ferry fire, and using regular intelligence, the clutter caused by modern media soon becomes apparent. I have just had a visit from a Lady who was 90 last Sunday, her husband died on Christmas Eve last year, an old Navy Man of WW2. She also has had flu over the past week, and came for a bit of friendship and another copy of the book for her friend who's husband died recently, Alan Greenwood. It was "tot time" here, this she did not share, but I gave her a wee glass of Glayva. This week upon waking she found that her central heating was not working (boiler pressure drop) and called her insurance company, within an hour she was called by a plumber who was in working in Oswaldtwistle, to tell her that he would be there soon, this he was and soon sorted the problem, she offered him a brew but told him "there is no milk" He replied "that's ok, I have a flask. He left, but returned soon after with a litre of milk for her, now that's a proper plumber is it not!!!!!!!

Our plumber dropped in with a replacement TRV head first thing this morning. No time for a chat, 5 minute job. He's rushed off his feet today with people phoning in because their boiler appears to have failed - the reason is that their heating oil feed from tank to boiler has frozen. That puzzled me until he explained that it's due to water getting into the line and it's the water that freezes and blocks it.

Tiz, in the days when diesel additive technology hadn't got as good as it is today drivers often found diesel freezing because of very fine ice particles in the fuel. The cure was one gallon in eight of petrol in the fuel. However most blockages were water in the filters and separators that hadn't been cleaned before winter.
Mo came, we've proved the ballast is at fault in the lamp, as soon as it warms up it trips out. He's coming this morning with a new fitting for the kitchen and a new ballast. We;ll put the new unit up in the kitchen repair the old one and put that in the workshop. Good lad and he's very patient!
Water where Asian airline went down is only 120ft deep so search will be possible.
A tragedy in Idaho. See THIS for a report of a mother being shot and killed in a Walmart supermarket when her two year old child reached in her bag and her gun went off accidentally. Moral of this story is don't have a gun where a child can get hold of it...... Bizarre!

How light it is in the kitchen now I have a new El Cheapo 2X35watt tube fitting working properly. It's only temporary until I get the new ballast I ordered yesterday. When it comes I'll install it, give the lamp a good burn in to test it and then my mate Muthomi will pop round and we'll replace the temporary one with the original fixture. The El Cheapo light will be transferred to replace the old single tube lamp over the main bench in the shed. I need as much light as possible! Looking back we should have simply replaced the tubes and the ballast in the first place but hindsight is 20/20 vision! Never mind, we've got there in the end and I'm grateful to Muthomi for helping me. You can't beat some big strong lads in the family!

Can anyone give advice on the following? There's a product being sold on Ebay called `Wire Glue' which is an electrically conductive adhesive sold as an alternative to soldering for low voltage connections such as computer repairs and hobbies including railway modelling. It looks like an ideal solution for someone like me who can't solder for toffee and is liable to solder his hands instead of the wires! But does it work? There's a typical Ebay page here that shows the product pack and you can read the details of front and back if you scroll down the page:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wire-Glue-Ori ... 1516078422

Never come across this before Tiz, looks like its carbon suspended in some form of water based curing compound. Only claims to be (and probably is) only suitable for low power applications. If its a low power connection you can probably get by with a good mechanical joint although I would automatically finish the job with a run of solder and heat shrink if I needed insulation, that's OK if you are confident with soldering which to me is second nature but I can understand where many go wrong. As I see it, it would only be good for low current or you would possibly run the risk of a high resistance joint. I think how good it performs will be totally dependent on the job in hand.

I once enquired about some silver loaded epoxy resin that was electrically conductive. I think its main purpose was attach piezoelectric crystals to a main backing. Very expensive and only sold in bulk quantities. I didn't follow it up any further.

An extremely violent period of wind at 03:00 this morning. Loud enough to waken me up. completely gone now.
Another rust bucket abandoned of the SE coast of Italy and drifting. It is loaded with 450 refugees. It's a 49 year old livestock carrier. It looks like a new ploy by the people smugglers.
See THIS for a report that Thomas Piketty has refused the Legion d'Honneur from the French government on the grounds they are not qualified to assess honour. Good man.....

Thanks Ian and Plaques for your comments. It seems that the silver-containing adhesives were, as Plaques, says very expensive and only used commercially but then carbon (graphite) started to be used and is a lot cheaper. It's one of those areas where someone could make money and do us all a favour if they developed a really effective low-temperature electrically conducting jointing material that you could just squeeze from a tube or apply with a brush or spatula. No need for hot irons, electricity supply, eye protection and no inadvertent spots of solder to burn holes in your jumper (collateral damage!).

Our local council announced the changes to the recycling and waste collections for the festive period well in advance and they were well publicised on the Web and in local publications. There would be no collections from before Christmas through to after New Year, so we had to stash our rubbish away for a couple of weeks. Imagine our surprise then when the collection wagons came round on Saturday the 27th Dec and then again today on the 2nd Jan! Of course hardly anybody had put the waste and recycling out to be collected and the wagons were able to whizz by almost empty. I managed to catch them today and ask them what had happened - cock up by the council was the answer. The council has paid for two collection but there's hardly anything to collect!

Reports that they have found two large parts of the downed airliner in the Java Sea in 40 metres of water and that 30 bodies have been recovered from the surface, some still strapped in their seats. Looks as though we might get some answers....
The derelict ship loaded with Syrian refugees is safe in port. How long until the next one?

The growing reports of people cashing in pensions under the new rules... I fear there is another pensions scandal building up here....

"..people cashing in pensions under the new rules.." - Stanley
The new rules are for people who haven't yet taken out an annuity. There's also pressure on the Government to change the rules and allow those who have already taken out an annuity to sell it to the highest bidder. This could create even more problems as people choose to `take the cash' when an annuity would be the best deal for many of them. All part of the `have it now' culture.

Whoops, there goes £500,000 of wind turbine! I'll bet it would be frightening if you were nearby.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-30671607

Something very funny about that turbine, evidently it wasn't a big wind that felled it. One wonders how stable the foundations were.....
What a difference a rearrangement of the lighting in the shed can make. Floods of light and less clutter. Onward and upward!
I was reminded about the perils of the internet for young children and the difficulty of ensuring they are not exposed to bad sites. Imagine you are a child and doing a project on wildlife. You Google Cougar and get as big a shock as I did yesterday! I never knew about that connotation of 'cougar'....

The news that developers have won their appeal to build on land off Long Ing.

It looks like Barlick is behind the eight ball. The presumption to build plus the massive number of houses that the Pendle Council has approved in its core strategy means that virtually any building application will ultimately be granted. This is not to say that building will commence immediately, such building plots are used as bargaining levers for other developments. We are going to see at lot more of these maneuverings in the near future.

News from Littlewood's Pools that my weekly 8 from 10 forecast had won £11.75! My first win in almost 40 years (same numbers)! In case you are wondering why a non-gambler like me spends this money every week, I reckon it's worth it because I can allow myself a pleasant daydream about what I could do with a big win. As well as that it's a blast from the past when my dad and I used to have a joint entry.... Sentimental old fool eh? Who knows, my luck may have changed.......
Rolls Royce Cars report the fifth year of increased sales. Someone still has a bob or two to spend. I noticed that when the interviewer was talking to the CEO he said that perhaps Piketty was correct and all the money was rising to the top of the food chain. That went down like a lead balloon with the executive....

Stanley wrote:Who knows, my luck may have changed.......

I wouldn't call it good luck to have taken 40 years to win £11.75. You and your Dad should have used the money to buy Dinky cars, kept them in their boxes and stored safely. They'd be worth a lot more than £11.75 now! (But it's easy to say such things 40 years later.) Even better if you'd bought postcards. I've been reading about a man who selectively bought good quality, old postcards in the 1950s for a few pennies and continued collecting throughout his life. Those cards now fetch £50 upwards, each!

A lot of truth there Tizer. A lot has been said today about the current housing market, "you can get a home for as little as £29,000 deposit"? This would have bought me 25 houses for the cost of my first one!! In Germany the sheets are being ruffled because a group of people in Dresden have had enough and are making their feelings known, like many others, they are brassed off by being told what they must accept and put with, the difference being that they are not afraid to make their feelings public. We must not be seen to be politically incorrect whatever the cost, stick "phobic" on the end of just about anything, and the media will castigate anyone who has genuine concerns. If they who are on the receiving end of such concerns could just bend a little, and move on from the middle ages, as some are trying to do, even upon threat of death, we may yet have peace on this planet. If I receive just one more unwanted call from a sickly voiced individual from the Asian Sub Continent, I "will" make my feelings known, and in terms that would make the PC brigade shrivel and develop cardiac problems en mass. We in this country are generous to they who are in trouble, and will always try to help, the same applies to the rest of the free world, "Do Not Push Your Luck"!!

Ah Tiz, but it was never about profit and loss. It was and is a chance to dream.....
I see that the United Nations Civil Aviation committee has proposed that all commercial flights should register their precise position ever 15 minutes. Sound sensible to me and I have heard that it would be relatively cheap. (LINK)
My friend Gulam from Chaudrey's has been in hospital for an operation on his neck. He is doing well and recovering at home. Good, he's a nice man.
Later on the way back from the shops I saw someone waving at me but couldn't see who it was. Got nearer and it was Doc! We've had a couple of hours catching up and he's fine, still working on the house but definitely sailing off this summer to deliver Margaret's engine in Fremantle. So nice to see him and Jack went wild with delight!

The murders in Paris and the aftermath...
The car transporter taking charge and re-floating herself on the high tide. Bit of a surprise for the salvage team who weren't expecting it. Good result as all they have to do now is correct the list and all is well. Doc was saying yesterday that he reckoned someone had opened the wrong transfer valve and instead of shifting ballast to the high side they had reversed it and made thins worse. He could well be right, human error.

I tend to buy Charlie Hebdo when I’m in France. My French isn’t good enough for a lot of the content, but the cartoons are always superb and often extremely disrespectful as any good satire should be. The only cartoonists here that comes close in my opinion is The Guardian’s Steve Bell and the same publication’s rather darker and disturbing Martin Rowson. This is Steve Bell’s effort in today’s Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... rtoon-bell

I couldn’t have put it better

Richard Broughton

Funnily enough I tripped over this one in my archive this morning....



The other thing that grabbed me was a conversation with two of my daughters and they had been looking at the archive of pictures that I have given them. They said that as they got older they realised what a good looking bloke I was in those days..... Nice! But it's taken them 50 years to recognise I was a babe magnet! Bunty at the Coronation always called me Freddy because she said I was a dead ringer for Freddy Garrity of the Dreamers....

The terrible situation that developed in France with the attack on Charlie Hebdo has now moved into an even worse phase, already more lives have been needlessly lost. The two brothers are now contained in an industrial complex to the north east of Paris, but they have at least one hostage, a young woman. The gunman who killed in Paris yesterday, and could have been the 3rd member in the Charlie attack, has re-emerged in a cosher supermarket in Paris and has take a number of hostages, including women and children. None of these evil bastards can now escape, and are prepared for martyrdom. The two factions are in contact thanks to modern technology, and it now appears that there are others involved. This is not going to end well at all. Last night on BBC's question time, this was the first topic for discussion , A man in the audience stood up and said "I am a Muslim, we deplore this kind of atrocity, and I appeal to all they of our faith to stand behind their adopted countries in a bid to stamp out extremism" He was given much applause. I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment and admire his courage, yet they need to understand that if this is to succeed, they must co-operate with the rest of us, and give up they who they know are a problem. There is little doubt that fear of reprisal is a good reason for keeping quiet, but they can do it if they stand together and ask for help.

News that a Vegan butcher's shop is to open in Minneapolis. In Guam they sell Vegan Spam.....