Scriv
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Posts posted by Scriv
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Did you know that when Bill died he went to Wilford Hill in his cofin on the back of one of his trucks ,Just thought you might like to know .
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.
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Leyland Nationals were very light on the front end, I lost one Lenton Lane, luckily no passengers on.
They were noisy sods too. And rattled like hell as they got older.
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Marks and Spencer use to have all there knitwear from above factories if any garment had a stich 1mm away they used to send the whole batch back.
Now I ask you where do the garments come from now days?
Every thing had to be perfect for them, till they stopped buying British goods, then guess what I tried 3 skirts on all same size and each one differed on the waist. Ask the sale lady why!!!! so much different as all skirts same size. Did not get an answer.
No more to say
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 less money to buy those high-quality products. Retail companies therefore source their products from countries where labour and raw materials are cheaper, so as to be able to sell their goods at a competitive rate in order to survive. Cycle continues till we reach the bottom.
The cop-out from the left is normally to blame Thatcher, who happened to be PM at the time. Realistically it's far bigger than that, and if we're honest has been going on for a lot longer. When I was a kid in the 1960's, "Made in Japan" was a by-word for cheap tat. Nowadays it's more or less desirable if you're going to get a quality product, and it certainly isn't cheap.
It's also worth noting that whilst we did indeed make a lot of very good things in the UK we also produced our fair share of crap, particularly in the immediate years before the Thatcher government. Again,Japanese cars were derided as being cheap and cheerful whereas in reality they were at least as well made as British ones, no worse in terms of rusting and always far better equipped.Today they're pretty much the benchmark which other manufacturers strive towards.
We can moan about all these "historic" factories closing as much as we like, but as a nation we have to consider how much of the decline is in fact self-inflicted.
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You could be spot on there Catfan.
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.
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"you know what thought did" but I still don't know
According to me dad (but when me mam weren't listening) "thought he farted but he S*** himsen".
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And Selectadisc. Now that really WAS a Nottingham institution!
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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?.
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Sorry just realised this is light years old. Mods please delete.
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The nanny state again.
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.
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There's a very simple solution to all this. If you can't pay for a thing outright, then don't have the damn thing.
In 70 years, I've only ever had two things on HP. A three piece suite in the early 70's, an a car in the early 2,000's.
When I applied for the loan for the car, a slip of a girl at my bank told me that 'They' didn't like customers like me as I had no credit rating. I replied ' No, because if I can't afford anything outright, then I don't buy it' . She looked aghast at me. Twerp !
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.
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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.
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Same thing tho Scriv !
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 cabs and dash layout were virtually identical it could easily fool you if you were constantly hopping from one to t'other. You weren't supposed to be able to force the box into low range over a given speed, but one of Bill Kelly's drivers managed it, ripped the propshaft clean off and through a fuel tank. Bill blamed me for not tightening the propshaft bolts, was none too pleased when I marched into his office,dumped the offending prop (complete with gearbox flange still firmly bolted on) on his desk ,and sent his tea flying, to prove it was driver error.
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Later "splitter boxes" were much more simple, start in low range until top gear aquired, then start in lowest gear again after selecting high range first.
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.
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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.
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I preferred the steam also but I never hated the Deltics. But they were noisy bu--ers. I know! so were steam locos but steam locos made a NICE noise.
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.
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Went past The Nags Head and Plough, at Stapleford this morning, demolished, I think the land is going to be part of the new Aldi, that they are building
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.
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I think the rot set in many years ago.And people seem to have also ripped Notts off..several greedy managers/and an ex pub landlord spoke to the players like dirt.I honestly thought when Schmeichel was in goal..that would provide some kind of cornerstone.. they flogged him up the road..yer man who went to Wednesday sold out too!!( dream boss?) Martin O'Neill and a blank cheque book.
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.
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Don't forget Scriv that "The Miners" had a strong union & were thus better organised.
Surly a case for workers joining a union & why governments of a certain colour don't like unions
"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.
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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 to claim thousands. I'm not inferring that miners didn't deserve good terms; just that it should have been a far more level playing field.
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Scriv (#54), your comment, 'Strip away the sentiment and it was a wretched existence for men down the pit too.' was quite correct but the difference being that the miners had a choice whereas the ponies didn't.
It was good to learn that the miners treated them well, though.
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 massively towards their own demise by virtue of poor management, slack practices and inefficiency. A job I used to do regularly when driving for West's via Jock Kelly, was to collect crates of machinery from one pit and take them to another; a month later, I'd pick up said crates (unopened and unused) and take them to yet another pit. this could go on for months. The purpose of this was to use up allocated transport budget, which wouldn't come back if they didn't use it. There were hundreds of similar "fiddles" going on, and pilfering of NCB stuff was rife, and regarded as an unofficial perk. Much of this of course ended up being paid for by the taxpayer as the industry was ridiculously over-subsidised. Once Thatcher sent the bean-counters in, a lot of this came to light and in my opinion hastened the industry's demise.
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It does seem a wretched existence for the ponies, Oztalgian.
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's getting it out of the ground in a cost effective way that matters. We can't in the UK; the future of coal (if it has one) is in open cast mining and this country's too small to make that a viable option.
Worth pointing out that many of the lefty intelligentsia who supported Scargill are the same ones who'd be up in arms if an open-cast mine was suggested within fifty miles of their nice barn conversion. See fracking for an example.
Most of you will remember what Hucknall smelt like on a foggy night with all those coal fires burning away. Do we really want to go back to that? And would any of you recommend a career as a miner to your children?
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Just though of another, the locals in Llanelli pronounce it 'lesh ly' - go figure.
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.
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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.
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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 emigrated there had just put it on e-bay an hour before I started searching.
1972 Harley-Davidson XLCH Sportster. Currently in the middle of a much-interrupted cosmetic rebuild to factory stock. Goes like stink; and I really must finish it before my right knee becomes too arthritic to kick the damn thing into life!
That'll do for now; I'll dig out some of me previous ones another night.
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Emperor's suit of clothes!
in Questions about use of Forums?
Posted
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.