Scriv

This new setup's blimmin' horrible. Let me know when it goes back to summat vaguely legible please. Won't be bothering till it does.

A fitting gesture. Some might have considered Bill a bit of a "cowboy" but he was an old-school transport man through and through. I liked the bloke, and there's not many gaffers I'd ever say that about.

They were noisy sods too. And rattled like hell as they got older.

Hmm. Look at that from the other side; it's all very well having high standards (and I'm not saying that we shouldn't) but it comes at a price, and it's a price that British consumers became both unwilling and to an extent unable to pay. If you as a company adhere to those standards, that British supplier of yours ends up having to sell a lot of its products off as rejects, at a lower price, if it fails to maintain the required quality control standards. Profits tumble, economies of scale are made; and those latter rarely if ever involve improvements. Jobs are lost, and that means people have

IIRC Newton's lorries were dark blue with maroon pinstriping. Very similar livery to Amos Meer of Ilkeston; one of whose lorries I saw down here in West Wales t'other day, good to see they're still going.

According to me dad (but when me mam weren't listening) "thought he farted but he S*** himsen".

And Selectadisc. Now that really WAS a Nottingham institution!

Okay then. Was going to say that there are a helluva lot of 'em still around, according to Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom the one in the picture on that page, which has been restored in Cardiff, looks remarkably like the ones on the ring road in Nottingam; near Crown island.weren't they?.

Sorry just realised this is light years old. Mods please delete.

Or perhaps more likely they don't sell them because there's no demand. Wet shaving and beards seem to be much more in vogue these days; I never did get on with an electric razor anyway, nor did my late father. Mum bought him a Philishave for Christmas once, don't think he used it more than a dozen times.

My old man used to reckon he'd never bought owt on tick. I asked if he'd paid cash for our house..... he insisted that a mortgage wasn't the same thing as hire purchase.

Those couplings were called "Scammell couplings"; they were ideal for that job because the design did away with the necessity for the driver to wind the legs up and down, thus making changing trailers much quicker.

Same but different. Reason I said it could embarrass you was if you thought you had a splitter box when you were driving a range-change, and inadvertently flipped it into high range too soon, you ended up "catching a crab" as they say in rowing and stalling the motor. Specially embarrassing pulling up out of Stanton Ironworks with a full rack of pipes on, ask me how I know! Hardest ones to remember were the Fuller Road-ranger 9-speeds fitted to both ERF's and Seddon-Atkinsons in the late 1970's; same box but opposite gate, the ERF's were back-to front opposed to the Sedd-Ack. Given that the c

My apologies for appearing pedantic but what you're describing there is a "range change" box not a splitter. Totally different animal, as many a novice driver found to their embarrassment.

Corbyn's problem where clothes are concerned is that whatever he wears, he always looks, as my old man used to say, "like a sack of **** tied in the middle". Always reminds me of my old geography teacher.

If you're going to have a diesel there is very little nicer to listen to than a well-thrashed Napier Deltic. I've always loved the sound of two-stroke diesels, having been brought up within earshot of Hoveringham Gravels' main quarry, where they kept a fleet of two-stroke Fodens back then.

Aye, sad; but the bottom line is there'll be a damn sight more money made in that supermarket than ever there was at the pub.

If we're honest Notts have done bugger all of any note since Mick Walker was sacked in 1994, apart from the brief resurrection under Sam Allardyce.

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely". As applicable to trade union leaders as it is to politicians. A more moderate and less ambitious leader than Scargill might have done less damage to the industry. Discuss. Oh, and BTW I'm a union member myself.

I wasn't particularly singling miners out mate, it happens everywhere, but you and I both know full well how badly British Coal (and in fact virtually every other state monopoly) was managed. I supppose it bugs me a little that workers in the mining industry seem to be singled out as a particularly deserving case when many other workers in many other industries went to the wall with much less compensation in the way of redundancy payments, re-training schemes and the like; not to mention the "vibration white finger" scheme which enabled blokes who'd never been near a coal face in their lives

Up to a point. Back in the depression years between the wars, for many in mining communities it was either the pit or the dole. It has to be pointed out though that with the considerable advances in mining technology, far fewer miners were needed in the latter days of deep mining, so the suggestion that by closing all the pits, many thousands of future jobs were lost is a bit of a red herring. I have no desire to offend those who worked below ground, for it's a job I'm thankful I never had to do; but it also has to be said that the pit workers, the NCB, and later British Coal, contributed mas

Strip away the sentiment and it was a wretched existence for men down the pit too. Pit closures were always going to happen. The way it happened was far too swift, it was far too brutal but it was inevitable. Labour could never have carried it off and they knew it all too well; and if it was so vital to the country's needs why didn't the Blair government re-open some pits, start new ones or at least re-nationalise the industry? Because it's over and done with, that's why; and it's high time people accepted that and moved on. We might be sitting on top of millions of tons of the stuff but it'

Close but no cigar. Klan-ech-ly is more like it; but you'll find that the Welsh only do that when talking to an Englishman as it gives them a good excuse to spit on him! Closer to home; the local pronunciation of the Lincolnshire village of Folkingham is always good for a bit of a laugh.

As an aside; the son of the inventor of those Setright machines has his own place in transport history; he was the noted motoring journalist and author, L.J.K Setright.

Since I've been on this forum a few years now, I'd better put up a few pics of mine, past and present. Currently in the stable; 1942 Harley-Davidson WLC; one of 88,000 produced by the company during WW2. Most, due to the way the war went, ended up staying in Europe where they were sold off as war surplus. Massively popular in Holland and Belgium, and even to this day you can pretty much buy anything for them in the way of spares. 1979 Harley-Davidson ElectraGlide. Bought this in August 2013; found it purely by chance in Valencia, California where a former member of my club who'd emigrat