WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Tripps]

It sounds like the Rural Payments Agency is the International Developments Agency people working under another name!

Tripps, your use of `So' (and Stanley's) are traditional, used to imply one thing follows another. The very common use that has formed during recent years is when someone is asked questions and starts most of their answers with `So'. As far as the UK is concerned, this all seemed to begin (I regret to say) with scientists. They were doing it well before the rest of the population, usually when asked questions by conference participants at the end of their lecture, or by the media. Thus if asked "Is Earth round or flat?" they would begin "So, the latest evidence suggests....". The word seemed to fulfil the same `thinking space' function as `Well' and `Now', but being unfamiliar it irritated many listeners. I don't know where the scientists picked up the habit; I would guess from US scientists...but where did they get it from, I wonder? The first time I heard anyone comment on its use was when the presenter of the Radio 4 `Inside Science' programme drew attention to it.

It looks like John Humphrys of the Radio 4 Today programme has caught up with us, and like me, does not like the current usage.

start with so

[PanBiker]

It costs us about $80 for a trailer load at our local tip. Every rate payer gets 4 tickets per year for free dumping, two tickets equate to one trailer load.

We get 10 bags worth of inert waste per year but the bags are only 600x900mm. Trailers are a straight charging regime which depends on the size of the trailer, 1M trailer £17.50, 2M £35.00 and 3M (maximum allowed) £52.50. I assume you could go as many times as you like with a trailer as long as you pay for each trip. All these tariffs are for domestic waste so no commercial lads with vans, pickups and the like. No traders are allowed at the recycling site.

The other skips for segregated waste are still free so you can still take, wood metal, green garden waste, oil, batteries, plastic and glass etc. I wonder how long it will be though before these items come under tariff?

Good job I will have all my old kitchen units to dispose of in the not too distant future. I may well put the cabinets and cupboards on one of the local Facebook recycling sites as free on collection to see if anyone wants them for allotments or anything like that. It may save me having to shift them myself.

[Tripps]

I went to Cambridge this afternoon. Went round a bend, and met 200 naked cyclists coming the other way. Something to do with road safety, respect for cyclists, and being proud of your body. The Police have been on TV to say it that public nudity was all quite legal - unless they harass the public.

Be that as it may - and I think they just didn't relish the job of dealing with it all - it was most certainly not a pretty sight. Rory McGrath with no shirt on, I can cope with, but this was in a different league.

[Stanley]

Mick and Susan visited the Gormley Men on Crosby Beach yesterday. Magic.... I like the barnacles.....
Nice to see MV Balmoral is steaming on. A proper ship......

[Tizer]

I went to Cambridge this afternoon. Went round a bend, and met 200 naked cyclists coming the other way.

If they were really naked then the police could have them for failing to wear a helmet!

[Tripps]

I've just learned that there is no legal requirement to wear a helmet whilst cycling in UK. To be fair though, one of them had a WWII steel helmet on - but nothing else.

I may yet need counselling.

[Tizer]

Ask for compensation for the lasting distress that you've suffered!
In the last Radio 4 News Quiz they read out a newspaper cutting about trouble at the start of a cycle race in Canterbury involving naked men. It reported that a man was banned because he `became aroused' while waiting on the start line. The organisers of the race said "Everything is above board. If anything like that happens we stamp on it quickly."

[Stanley]

An unfortunate turn of phrase.
How spring cabbage affects my system.......

[Stanley]

The latest developments in the case against Lord Janner. (LINK). I agree with the MP for Rochdale that regardless of Lord Janner's competence, examination of the allegations that these crimes took place is in the public interest. Not least in that it might encourage other witnesses to come forward. At the moment one can't help having suspicions that powerful pressure groups are attempting to hold the lid down on a very large can of worms. Private Eye had an interesting piece about how this is affecting the awards in the honours system. Candidates have never been so thoroughly scrutinised. PE reckons this is why the Order of the Garter is at present two knights under strength.... Something is very wrong here and it needs sorting.

[plaques]

Buckingham Palace is to be decorated at a cost of £150M. This is probably on the low side once the work gets underway. I always understood that it belonged to the Crown Estates, ie: us and not part of the Privy Purse. ie: owned by the queen. In the times of austerity shouldn't we be thinking about selling the place and downsizing her to a nice little flat in Tower Hamlets? I'm sure Boris would oblige.

[PanBiker]

The doing up budget for the Queen is a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed for the House of Commons or more precisely the Palace of Westminster. They are actually discussing whether or not to evacuate the building for 3 to 5 years so that repairs can be undertaken in which case the projected cost are somewhere around 3 Billion pounds or to stay there and have the workforce required work around them which would ramp the costs up to a current estimate of 7 Billion over 40 years which still does not address the problem of the whole site sinking into the Thames. These estimates have been considerably revised downwards since it first dawned that the place is actually falling down. Probably to make it a bit more palatable.

Either way it's pure madness. Evacuate the building now, shore it up for folk to look at, shove a cinema / tourist trap on the end to show visitors the history, make the clock tower safe so we can still have Big Ben and bobs your uncle.

Move parliament to the middle of the country in a nice new office block and we're done, plenty of change out of the odd billion and probably enough to give Buck Palace a coat of paint.

[Tizer]

Palace of Westminster....A number of letters to The Times from MPs raised various reasons why they shouldn't have to move elsewhere but there was one short missive from a more realistic MP saying if they didn't employ so many `advisers' then they could occupy a much smaller building.

[Stanley]

The bottom line is the same as many other problems, the maintenance has been neglected over the years, the Members aren't engineers and as long as the loos work and nothing falls on them all is well. Now the pigeons have come home to roost they don't want to be disturbed. Tough! There is the small point about where they could move to.... They won't want to leave central London. HSBC building at Canary Wharf? Buckingham Palace?

[Bruff]

It’s been known for decades that the Palace of Westminster needs millions/billions spening on it. Unfortunately, doing anything about it has fallen foul of no Government, of any colour, wishing to be seen as the one that sanctioned spending billions on doing-up their opulent working environment when everyone else has to make do, so to speak. It’s like the issue of MP’s pay and expenses and public funding of political parties. There are really good cases to be made for changes here but the changes require tackling serious and entrenched public aversion. And we do not have politicians willing to, let alone perhaps capable of, doing the difficult thing and making the case.

Still, while the work’s done or if a new build is knocked together, they could come and use St George’s Hall here in Liverpool, which only gets a run out for the odd event like the Liverpool Beer festival these days. Finest neo-Classical building in the country that is. Someone suggesting this a few months back did note that Liverpool as a city is a bit too ‘strongly-flavoured’ for many, so how about Rochdale Town Hall? The Guardian newspaper has often mooted the Forest of Bowland as the place for a new Commons, part of an odd interest in this part of the world on the part of that paper.

Richard Broughton

[Tizer]

How about the Midland Hotel, Morecambe? It was good enough for the RAF as a hospital in WW2 and it's were Poirot took Captain Hastings to "stimulate zee little grey cells". LINK

[PanBiker]

Instead of looking for temporary accommodation in existing buildings they should just fund a brand new purpose built office / conference / meeting place somewhere more central. That would basically be up North, somewhere between Stoke in the South and York in the North. They could build on a nice brownfield site, (plenty of them up here). The building could be tricked out with all the latest telecom and IT infrastructure as is the norm in new builds. Fraction of the cost of anything currently being contemplated and may actually help to re-address the North/South divide. It would be no different for the Southern MP's commuting to Parliament as it is the Northern ones having to go to London. At the end of the day it's only a committee that needs accommodation. Stuff all the pomp and circumstance, you can have all that in the feature at the Palace of Westminster tourist attraction cinema.

[Bruff]

Yes, I personally would prefer a brand new build with accomodation and if your constituency is within an hour’s commute that’s what you should do, commute. This favours London I suppose as with the transport infrastructure there, a lot of constituences are within an hour’s commute (anyone who wishes to commute for longer is at liberty to do so, obviously). The accomodation should be of a reasonable standard of comfort, say a Premier Inn equivalent, and there should be the facility to cook a meal of a night. Of course, expenses would be paid for those who travel back home to the constituency of a weekend, a standard class advance rail ticket or air fare, and reasonable mileage rates if you have to drive a bit at the end. Other expenses would be available – capped ‘actuals’ for subsistence costs incurred in line with one’s day-to-day duties for example.

Pretty reasonable terms and conditions these I would have thought, quite in line with the better employer’s. You can make no money out of them but you are not, and of course should not find yourself, out of pocket.

Not a cat in hell’s chance...............

Richard Broughton

[Tripps]

"Not a cat in hell’s chance..............."

Which nicely sums up the chances of any move out of London.

[PanBiker]

Something I do have control over. I have finished replacing the ceiling in my kitchen, first stage in the refurb. Cabling is all installed ready for the integral down lights. Plasterer came today to give the job a coat of looking at and an estimate which was accepted, Job will be done next Tuesday including the area of wall that I had to knock back to get rid of a large area of salt bloom which was the result of a leaking shower in the bathroom above some years ago. We can move on to ordering the units up now.

[Stanley]

Really sensible posts, thanks, I enjoyed them. To deal with the important one first, glad your refurb is going well Ian. Weird but I had a lovely dream last night, I went away for a fortnight and when I came back the shed was three feet wider, two feet higher and freshly plastered and decorated......
As for the Palace of Westminster. Dead right and as Ian says while they are at it refurbish all the procedures and drag them screaming into the 21st Century! It is ridiculous how they vote for example....
The best ride time in the country (the place with most people living closest to it in terms of how long it takes to drive there) is Rocking Stones on the moor above Ellenroad. I found that out when we were researching tourism potential of Ellenroad. There was at one time, just after the M62 was built, a proposal to build a new administrative city up there but it all fell through. At the time I said it was because there were no wine bars..... (For the same reason Buxton Opera House has a better ride tome than Covent Garden)
The reason why there will be no significant change is that they are locked into the complicated system that is the Monarchy, the Establishment and the outdated traditions that were the keystone of the revision of the power hierarchy when Victoria became unpopular after she retreated to Scotland after Albert died. That was the last meaningful revision and was aimed at preserving the medieval status quo. It is ridiculous but there will be no change.... Ruritania springs to mind.
The fact that Stanley's view has been relegated to the back of the BET and buried in the property adverts.....
The report in the BET about rats in Barlick. It would seem that Jack and I are not alone! We had a close encounter in the Pioneer car park a few days ago....

[Tizer]

Once climate change starts forcing even more migration to Britain, and the immigrants begin to pour out of lorries in the South-East, you'll soon find a new enthusiasm among the Honourable Members for moving to `a more convenient location' up north!

[Stanley]

Move the Queen to Balmoral permanently?

[Stanley]

The kicked over litter bin and the plants ripped out of their beds in Town Square made me reflect not only that whoever did these things is wired up differently than you and me but that as policing diminishes under the cuts we will see more of this. What a depressing thought..... What we need is a marked police car patrolling the town centre at closing time..... Fat chance.....

[Tizer]

Announcement on Greece at 09.15 this morning - see Politics thread here: LINK

[Wendyf]

Looking through some old photos this morning I came across this beautiful one of Ardnamurchan lighthouse, taken from the hill behind our caravan about 1985ish. I think Stanley will like it.



This is the inside of our lovely "refitted" caravan...ladder rack bunks made sleeping for 12 possible! Note the mattresses covered in Harris Tweed and the essential wine box. Son Craig and his friend Mary playing clock patience. No phones, no radio, no computers.....games, stories and playing on the deserted beach. Again, I'd say 1985/6