Alton Towers' Nemesis #9: Let Me Entertain You

Check the 'Small Claims' procedure at County Court, which suggests we pursue all avenues to peace prior submitting the form online.

The way business works in the UK is that the corporates settle out of court, though where's the fun in that?

Our aim here is to extract £299's worth of entertainment at Blackstone's expense, given the cash is invariably going in the opposite direction. In fact at Robin Hood's 'Prince of Thieves' ride at the Towers, the emphasis is on stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

On reason I'd do it however is stems from the moniker Elon Musk awarded our PM for his handling as Director of Public Prosecutions and subsequent, which broadly exposes bias against people who are (a) old and (b) white... so that for instance at protests against fossil fuels or Israeli efforts in the Middle East, he's had a penchant for jailing retired colonels, vicars or people older than your granny.

For this reason if none other, he's the only leader of our country I've ever known to be greeted by chants of 'Keir Starmer's a wanker' at whichever football ground he attends in the effort to appear working-class.

There is a classic line in 'Blackadder' where 'Mad King George' (played by House's own Hugh Laurie in a comic role) says his people love him, shouting 'We hail you, George, we hail you' ...

... to which Lord Blackadder replies, 'We hate you, George, we hate you'.

Nonetheless we must move on, as there's more to life than politicking.

For instance I've a funeral to go to, and that's a part of life too.

Alton Towers' Nemesis #8: Black Arts

You don't have to dig very deep to discover that ultimately Alton Towers theme park is owned by a company notorious in the US for buying up property and then kicking its working-class tenants out onto the street.

It's something they could consider for the town-square... a themed activity where the kids are all given a house and a cost-of-living bag of sweets, and get ejected by people dressed as bailiffs if they don't give them back.

Worryingly they've started buying up properties on the sly in the UK, which two-tier Kier's Labour Party will be all for... what with it penalising labour.

There is some confusion betwixt BlackRock and Blackstone: pop them both into your 'Evil Bastards' folder.

The UK headquarters is in Poole, and one day I might take you there.

It's lovely, and a nice place for a Black Wedding.

Liking that 'Widespread Social Fiction', which could surmount the entrance at Alton Towers the way 'Arbeit Macht Frei' hung over the entrance to Auschwitz. Bit harsh for a kid's theme-park?

Alton Towers' Nemesis #7: TripAdvisor

Lovin' the fact that either the 'bots or the moderators at TripAdvisor highlighted this as a top tip. In fact if everyone did it we could bring down 'Faulty Towers' overnight.

Alton Towers' Nemesis #6: Trustpilot

Altogether delighted with the negative tone of this review... something I could do for a living, although I spin in either direction unlike the rides at Alton Towers that frequently don't spin at all.

Trustpilot is the go-to website for dependable reviews and originated as I recall in Holland, where they've an elevated view of what counts in society. Were it based in the US, you'd know that it had been bought out by a corporate and biased to their own ends in contrast.

Notable the fact that practically two-thirds of visitors rate the Towers 'one-star' tho' you have to balance that against the fact that most doing the reviewing will likely be sad bastards like me who are tired of life in general.

I have though down-rated Google's own reviews accessible via their maps, if only due the fact it is swamped by any number of posts, any number of which might be filed by people paid to do so by the corporates concerned and seemingly sustaining whole villages in the Punjab.

I recall reading a how-to guide to success that originated as they all do in the US, and it recommended among other advice being 'racket-free'. By this I think they meant don't go off on personal crusades like this one here, but then my view is that life is a lot more than success.

Mental-health issues among youth in particular ~ according to the companies trying to get them to work ~ stem from the fact that social media leads them to think that life is easy and the riches that will eventually make them happy are just around the corner.

But life is not like that, and most of us never will see success of any sort and then it's all over (he writes, enroute to a funeral, where it should perhaps be me doing the orating).

In fact Alton Towers I feel taught my son a lesson, and the lesson is that on entry it is all pastel shades, sunshine, and happy people going about their crime-free lives in a place that looks like the Truman Show and then the power fails and you realise it's all run by adults who are as dumb as you are, if not dumber, leading you to the conclusion that existence is a vale of sorrows... as religion has tried to tell us for millennia prior to Facebook.

I should be running the Towers. In place of the 'David Walliams' zone I'd have the 'Schopenhauer Experience' where the ride enters the magic mountain only to stop in the dark to ask the children whether, seriously, they were happy ever to have been born.

You'd then go to Guest Services, who'd pretend to refund your money and tell you to 'fuck off and never come back'.

I'd love it.

Alton Towers' Nemesis #5: Jaw-Jaw Better than War-War?

I am pulling out all the stops to ensure a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Staffs and reach out to writer and actor David Walliams through his talent agency. I point out that in the event of conflict I view 'The World of David Walliams' as a legitimate target. I would provide the text here, except I cleared the cache... a court-marshal offence.

Alton Towers' Nemesis #4: Shock and Awe

Take a leaf out of Arthur Harris's playbook and carpet-bomb the platforms, following up the Google review with scathing feedback on both Trustpilot and TripAdvisor.

'We shall fight them on the Congo River Rapids, we shall fight them in the Katanga Canyons and in the Forbidden Valleys, in the Guest Services and the gents toilets... we shall never surrender.'

Alton Towers' Nemesis #3: Global Reach

In a scene that really may have been taken anywhere in the Donbas I set up Apple's fearsome 12-inch artillery piece for the opening salvo. With unlimited range and a muzzle velocity of some 186,000 miles-per-second, it is capable of firing Trustpilot, TripAdvisor or Google Reviews at a rate of ten an hour.

In this instance ~ which in time will be compared to the Nazi shelling of Gydnia in Poland ~ I authorised a high-impact review in the shape of an A4-printable Google, with the setting at 'one star' and screen pitched to 75° following the 'one-third' rule applied to mortars.

Subsequent, I wait anxiously in the situation room whilst trying to look as much like President Obama as is possible.

Alton Towers' Nemesis #2: Declaration of War

The cabinet office anxiously checks upcoming transactions

A nation of blog-readers holds its collective breath as transactions are reviewed by the Cabinet Office, or breakfast bar, and at 11:45 a.m. precisely I rise to speak to the house:

This morning my ambassador in Staffordshire handed Herr Sam a final WhatsApp stating that, unless we heard from them by 12 o'clock that they were prepared to pay reparations amounting to two hundred and ninety-nine pounds, a state of war would exist between us.

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this blog is at war with Alton Towers.

Alton Towers' Nemesis #1: Peace In Our Time

Colin brandishes feedback reference no. 1337 4406

(The author returns from the Midlands, where he was promised a refund for a family visit to Alton Towers subsequent to a power-cut from the get-go that meant none of the rides for which it is infamous ~ mainly for people losing limbs ~ were operating.)

Sam (full name follows) in 'Guest Services' did promise a full refund of the £299 involved, raising the issue on his tablet and ensuring its content was communicated through the usual channels during a time of heightened tensions.

Accordingly I am able to reassure the readership with a message of optimism for a beleaguered nation:

My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from the Midlands... peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.

There are only two things I want to say. Firstly I have received an immense number of emails ~ most of them spam ~ and wish to thank the people of Britain for what they have done.

And next I want to say that the settlement I have received from Herr Sam is only part of a wider settlement in which all Staffordshire can find peace.

The full text of the agreement issued 24th May 2026 at 11:42

50k

Already in May of this year we together ~ but mainly me ~ have achieved in excess of fifty thousand views, and it makes an old man very happy (though I don't know which one exactly).

As we move into an AI-powered world this blog is an anchor for the sane, although I suspect at least half of those views were undertaken by bots designed to skim my art and regurgitate it in an effort to bring people into conflict. In all of this though I hope that it's my hatred of humanity in general which comes shining through.

Though I am asked ~ mainly by myself ~ whether I will ever monetise the 'people's platform' as Lady Diana Spencer used to call it during phone calls in my head?*

And the answer is not so much never, as possibly, if it means 'Only Fans' gets me to an annual jamboree where I'm a dirty old man amongst a sea of porn stars.

I thank you all, from the bottom of my toilet-bowl.

Ed. He deleted 'and with my penis in hand' here.

Big Day Out: Derbyshire

We're back in the East Midlands of England, and in fact we never really left as it sits adjacent to Notts (as the abbreviation goes). Derbyshire is famous for a landscape called 'Karst' by geologists after the first person to be bothered to write about it viz. a spectacular assemblage of limestone valleys ~ called Dales ~ cut beneath the ice of the last glacier to cover Britain before drying out once they receded.

If it sounds confusing, bear in mind limestone is broadly porous, but not so when water within is frozen. If you want a modern equivalent, one way of 3-D scanning a human body is to freeze it solid and then slice it with a circular saw... although it's not something you'd want to try on a friend. Don't know though, maybe you would?

Our adventure begins at 'The Great British Car Journey' in the village of Ambergate where a collection of iconic British marques have been assembled by people like me whose gaze is fondly focused upon a past of pedal-cars, ice-creams and Boy Scout leaders now in prison. But look at this for the pedal-car of your dreams, alongside a full-sized Morris Minor in a shade of grey that is back in fashion after a period of 50 years... does that beat a blow-moulded body from China, or what?

We saw yesterday though, didn't we, how practically all of the superstructure of a 1940s model might be coach-built in wood but moving on to the 1950s and 1960s there was still a hangover in the form of cars with wooden doors; aping the trend in a newly-enriched America for 'shooting-brakes' to use for picnics:

And as someone whose body of work is something of a crapola of failed efforts, this one caught my eye. The Peel P50 was produced on the Isle of Man between England and Ireland for a few years in the 1960s (why?), holding the record for the smallest production car ever. What was best about it was the fact you could save on a coffin in the event of the inevitable collision and it is at least the same colour as a Lambo:

On the day in question, your honour, we are lucky to find ourselves amidst a 'meet' of car enthusiasts and my favourite amongst must be a first-generation Ford Capri. This baby was an effort once more to ape the trend in North America with flourishes of streamlining inspired by the Jet Age and colours more suited to sunny California than soggy days in the Midlands:

Let's leave this festival of personal means of transport however to explore the public of yesteryear in the shape of the National Tramway Museum in the Peak District of the same county; where exists as fine a collection as you could hope for in a setting restored to suit. Look at this drophead from Blackpool for example made specifically to enjoy days like these!

And do you ever see an image as iconic as this one (Ed. Yes)? For trams at Sheffield were among the last to be decommissioned, only to be replaced by dirty, noisy and less efficient buses in dirty, noisy cities were we mistakenly figured they'd have all the romance of Greyhounds. They've been re-introduced at great expense in cities like Manchester, because that's how we do things in great Britain:

And I said we'd return to Brush, didn't I, and do I break my promises (Ed. Yes)? For here is the legendary masthead from the Loughborough Works where some of the most iconic locos were built, besides the electrical bogeys powering such trams:

Moving however deeper into the dales, before we depart let us each hire a bicycle to ride along a line replete with cuttings and embankments that passes through some of the most imposing scenery anywhere, albeit smaller in scale than the Himalayas. The cycles are hired from Parsley Hay and the line formed a junction between local services and those between London and Scotland. Join Gromit and I now as we all ring the bells on our handlebars and shout "Express train coming throooooough!" as Gordon did in those books by that vicar with nothing better to do! Before we go too there's chance of an ice-cream at a recently-restored signal-box at Hartington just a mile along the track:

Well I hope you've enjoyed our days out this recent Bank Holiday in the UK as much as I have and if so, why not moan about how things were better back then like I do?

Big Day Out: Nottinghamshire

Come on, get your coats off and let's get out in the sunshine instead of stewing in doors like a washed-up blogger with dependency issues! We're off to East Midlands, where my airline career began and where Byron and his mates drank wine until the small hours out of human skull-caps!

As foreigners, the only connection you will have with Nottingham is with its sheriff, who like Mrs Thatcher preferred robbing the poor to give to the rich. But there is a whole lot more to it than that! Well actually there isn't really, but there is the Notts Industrial Museum adjacent a spectacular Elizabethan pile they call Wollaton Hall.

Let me take you by the digital hand and talk you through some of its highlights!

We're confronted at the outset by this cutaway AEC engine that goes slowly round and round, enabling us to see its big ends bathing themselves in sump oil much like the people do in Bournemouth now that the water companies have been privatised. Two things spring out at us from this engine, don't they? The first being its modest horse-power in view of the fact it was hauling double-decker buses and the second that it was produced in diesel and petrol variants... a rarity I am thinking nowadays. It was made in London, which is understandable given the fleet of buses they had.

Moving along please, this car is not THAT old but what distinguishes it from a Tesla for instance is the fact it is still coach-built in wood, with the exception of a pressed-steel chassis and a panel-beaten roof. As timber was plentiful and our woodworkers were not yet being paid to sit at home on Fentanol, it kind of makes sense?

But what's this doing here, a section of London's Victoria Line underground in what am guessing is cast iron? The method probably dates to Brunel and son, tho' now it tends to be reinforced-concrete sections being popped into place behind what they call a boring machine; which is why Elon Musk's hyper-loop project was run by 'The Boring Company'... geddit?

Probably lost in the cliched mists of time, but books used to be retailed like packets of cigarettes at railway stations: an idea pioneered by Allen Lane the day he forgot his iPad. A turning point in British history, meaning travellers could rot their brains at the same time a their lungs.

One of the Rev Awdry's 'troublesome trucks' the likes of this kept turbines turning with coal night and day, and the reason neither locos nor their drivers liked them is that they were not independently braked and instead parked using that handle at the side am thinking. It meant at sidings as they were shunted to-and-fro there'd be a succession of bangs and clangs as either each was accelerated away from the next or else driven against its bumpers. When I was your age, children, I'd fall asleep to the sound of truculent trucks like these or else wheel-spinning shunters at the Edge Lane sidings not too distant. Oh grandad, you poor bastard!

I include this here firstly because I can't be bothered deleting it and second because  it encapsulates British engineering history. Before diesel engines, Ruston produced a variety of steam engines designed for driving workshop or agricultural machinery. Nearly a century later it was acquired by English Electric, who turned engines into supersonic interceptors, and later GEC, the UK arm of Edison's company which quite literally powered the American dream.

Moving on (sit next to us for this bit Margaret!), it would be taken over by a French company called Alstom that produced high-speed trains about five decades before the UK could... and counting. The story has a happy diesel ending however, it being sold to German company MAN, which as you'll recall was the first to install Rudolf's engine in a truck.

Now that's what I call a lamp-post, cast here in iron in the form of sea-serpents that fortunately were not often encountered in Nottingham except on street furniture. As I explained to my son, the arms up top were for men to prop ladders against whilst changing the gas-mantles by whose light prostitutes would be murdered.

I include this here as we'll look at Brush later on our travels through Derbyshire, but suffice it to say that following the introduction of the Boulton and Watt engines used principally to pump water from mines or to lower miners into them, firms migrated from static steam to diesel for it quantum leap in energy efficiency. Brush took that further eventually by moving on (literally) to power locomotives.

In the steam hall there's inevitably (and happily) a traction engine, but check out its speed restrictions! This is likely not what the beast was capable of, but what officials considered safest so as not to alarm horses and small children. When automobiles were introduced to the UK, the government threw caution to the winds and allowed them to travel at 4 m.p.h. instead.

I include this as I had one as a child. I took it to a show-and-tell at school, to which Miss Milton commented 'Well, is that it?'. Well fuck you Miss Milton, I've had the last laugh. It's a 'Mamod' model steam-roller, used to make biscuits or something.

We won't forget to check this out though before we leave, as this sort of scale effort was used by employers to provide engineering apprentices with practical hands-on.

And this should have been included upon entry to the steam-hall, which features a live steaming on the fourth Sunday of each month. It's a diesel-powered generator that shows off German prowess in taking over from the Brits where steam left off. Diesel though actually got a better reception hereabouts because of the extent of the mills that were already established, but here it is used to skip mechanical means altogether and wire looms for sound instead of driving them with belts and pulleys. Distributed electrical power is changing flight as we speak in the way it shaped the factories of old. And not just that, but didn't Siemens power the first electric locos?

And could we sensibly leave without admiring this agricultural application of Diesel's engine? Why it needed quite so big an exhaust I don't know, but maybe farmers like to pimp their rides too?

Don't know about you, but I feel we all deserve a digital cream tea after all that!

Hot Stuff

As I write, the temperature in and around London has almost breached 35°C and a full two degrees above any previous record for the warmest May day on record. In India it is around 50°C, or the point at which deaths from heat stroke become more regular than rarity.

I like drawing connections; so what connects unanticipated sea-bathing in a town like Bournemouth on the south coast of England with the molten metal ladle we all admired yesterday?

Well to a great extent, fossil fuels have allowed aluminium to substitute for steel in the last century, in the way Bessemer's converter allowed for steel to sub for iron in the previous. For there are two things about the alloy you likely know already, one being that 80% of all aluminium that has ever been produced has been recycled and that the reason for that is because it is known as the 'energy' metal.

It is called this in turn because smelting it from bauxite (as I recall the ore is called) requires very considerable amounts of energy, which leads in time to sunnier days in Bournemouth. To produce recycled aluminium therefore requires just 5% of the energy needed to produce it in the first place.

Largely thanks to Mrs Thatcher's efforts and the piss-poor politicians we've had to suffer since, we've the most expensive energy in the Western world. As a result on those days I drive container-loads of chopped-up engine blocks around the UK, it is not to smelters here but to the docks where it is shipped to China and India before being shipped back to us as newly-minted product.

It is a win-win for the government, destroying the job-creation they so loathe at the same time as damaging the balance of payments. What it does most of all however is produce more carbon dioxide than ever, whilst they go about the business of the import of wind-turbines instead along with foreign companies capable of connecting it to the grid.

Napoleon described Britain as a nation of shop-keepers, and after a period during which the North and Midlands provided industries necessary to modernise a world, we've effectively gone back that way... the only difference being that now we steal from shops, whereas back in the day you'd have been deported to Australia for doing so.

Lucky buggers.

Steely Span

Lucky to have spotted this on travels among the Rother Valley... which with nearby Sheffield forged a history of steel-making that exported goods throughout the globe and pioneered any number of the methods and means involved. Steel is heavy in its molten state as its solid, and not far hence from here men would haul 150lb ceramic crucibles from a furnace beneath the floor all day and so lose two stone in weight in the process... which was put back on in the form of beer the same evening.

This though a mechanised form of doing much the same, and if you're wondering how it is that steel vessels can retain molten steel the clue is in the ceramic lining once more. The family form of Roper in Yorkshire produced the specialised foundry equipment required for all of this for over a century between 1921 and 2023, when afterward it was acquired by another UK firm in the same town that began its life in the 1960s... a relatively happy ending after all, if not an unalloyed joy?

Honey I Shrunk the Trailer

Few people know it ~ and shame on them ~ but trailers designed for shipping containers are telescopic. Incidentally in the US they are called semi-trailers, on the pretext that they are not self-supporting without a truck tucked underneath at the forward end. I view that as a technicality, but it’s not worth falling out over.

We enjoyed a recent discussion of container sizes, didn’t we, over in Trafford? Well now if you’d like to take out your exercise books we’ll discuss why such trailers ~ called sliders or skeletons in the trade ~ can be shrunk or extended at will. If we forget about 30-foot containers, which most people seem too have done anyway, stock 20-foot and 40-foot boxes have a socket for a twist-lock at each corner to hold them in place on ships, trucks and trains. In Cuba they are used as houses as I write, and I guess you could use each of these points to pin them to the ground with the hurricane season in view?

With the 20-foot soon extended to 40-foot incidentally it was perhaps inevitable that we would want something larger again, but the constraints involved in manoeuvring anything much larger given existing infrastructure would mean limiting this extension to five feet. The 45-foot container however was created by leaving the anchor-points as they were and adding a 2’6” extension at either end.  Driving this takes a little forethought as it produces an out-swing at the rear during turns and much the same at the forward end; where for instance it might catch a gate-post during turns at a sharp angle.

Broadly speaking then the trailer is run extended and has attachments in the middle for 20-foot containers and at each corner for the 40-foot. The trailer has then to be shrunk in order to allow access to the rear doors of the shorter boxes. A minor point too is that it can also be shortened by around eight inches in order to shift the centre of gravity of the longer 45-foot containers forward a little, principally to satisfy the requirements of the anti-skid system fitted to the trailer.

This Westinghouse type of braking system is powered by the pneumatic lines from the tractor-unit, and if disconnected from it the brakes will normally be applied automatically in order to stop the trailer rolling away upon disconnection… although the extendable legs do prevent this to a large extent. There is also a manual plunger to release the trailer’s brakes before the get-go, and if the trailer is unladen and the surface wet, the truck will happily drag it down the road with the driver largely unaware: one reason for leaving the window open at the off in order to clock the squealing.

It is also a reason for not bouncing to tunes on the radio until established, because the first thing to alert you to anything amiss is generally accompanied by an audible tell-tale. For this reason I was not a fan of noise-cancelling headsets in airliners, and invariably flew with one ear exposed so as to able to chat with the co-pilot. It meant however that you were able to listen to the hum of those jet-engines like a parent the gentle breathing of a sleeping baby: those CFM-56s being yours.

4 - 4 - 2

The UK's Strategic Defence Review (SDR) is a ten year plan for how to defend itself, and the most recent envisages a proportionate allocation of funding divided among re-usable drones, kiss-goodbye drones and crewed platforms at a ratio of some 40, 40 and 20 percent... although the government has yet to commit to funding it to an extent it appears to require.

Of more concern to the more military-minded is apparently the fact the PM's urgent admonition that defence will involve all of us... appears to have fallen on deaf ears, and the chances are he's forgotten he ever said it himself.

It does though follow the great British tradition of never being ready: we even had a king called 'Ethelred the Unready' for a while. Accordingly it has been a case of, Oh look, it's the Romans... Oh look, it's the Vikings... Oh look, it's the Normans... Oh look, it's Napoleon and Oh look, it's the Germans.

Accordingly, Oh look it's the Russians should come as a surprise to no-one though I suspect the latter would have made a better job of fixing pot-holes in the roads than they are ever likely to.

For by and large we've always been fairly ungovernable by anyone except ourselves and barely that... which has ever been our best defence, and likely to remain so.

66.6 the Number of the Beast?

Start assembling the 66% scale models as per prior post in 10mm laminate backer-board.

The light fading, I drop to my knees in a navy-blue onesie to apply finishing touches to beads of adhesive...

...only to get reported by neighbours out back for involving youngsters in satanic rituals!

Ed. Altar-pieces are now available on our merch page.

Honey I Shrunk the Drone

I’d be the first to admit that we failed to get T-motor’s U7 and Flame’s shitty 80A ESC working at all. You’re disappointed, I’m disappointed and we’re all hurting. I’m off to a McKinsey wedding in a French chateau this summer though, and a classical strategy among consultants is to circumvent obstructions rather than spend undue time tackling them head on.

Accordingly there are currently two issues prevailing at the moment and these are the facts are that (a) an eBay bath is a cost-effective 67” Hearty Italian sub to test the the models with and (b) if electrical components must also be subbed then small is beautiful. 

Taking the measure of our hydro-static test-facility, which is how Archimedes got his big break, it would appear that a 2/3rds scale of what we have currently would suit both contingencies. With a centre-section 400mm or 16” wide it’s a comfortable fit and that would allow it to be upto 1500mm long or 60”, to fit lengthwise too: but bear in mind that both cat and bath slope upward at what will be the forward end.

By such means we can look at alternative suppliers of both motor and ESC, whose head we can hold a gun to pending such time as they get an RC transmitter to talk to the two of them.

It just so happens too that I used a pair of 10mm laminated backer-boards to panel the bath with during the renovation we all enjoyed in recent posts ~ and sufficient over to build a pair of centre-sections like the previous, except a little shrunken. I realise Elon Musk is probably not wondering what he can do with a left-over bath-panel and whether he might build a space-ship with it, but I'm cutting a wet-suit to suit our cloth here.

At the same time, the family sit here requires that the conservatory is co-opted as a means of entertaining guests instead of drones, the way the front rooms of my past were preserved for occasional visits by the vicar, and ready should ever royalty call.

It does mean the proj is relegated to the garage, which is where I'd already decided to locate the bath; not wanting to be considered (more of) a nut-job by neighbours. 

Let me take you then by your digital paw then as we plan and build one of the most spectacular test-facilities the UK is still able to muster!

Financial OVOtures

Sale of energy firm OVO to German company EOn, which already has a sizeable slice of the dysfunctional UK energy market, for a reputed £600 million; a sum that should help restore its founder’s fortune following his contribution to a newer venture altogether in the form of flying taxi developer Vertical Aerospace. The latter is something the UK government ~ in a desperate effort to place all its chips on one of the few remaining gambles less likely to decamp abroad at the first opportunity ~ is practically the only electrified form of flight that it has backed in a substantial way.

An obvious reason for doing so is that politicians rarely know anything much beyond the palace of Westminster and how to profit personally from it, and thus rely upon what they consider to be the safest bet. This is generally, and especially when it comes to defence, companies like BAE Systems that already enjoy financial backing from abroad… combined with the fact that companies like Vertical can afford the salaries of people either skilled in pursuit of government grants or otherwise skilled in kissing the asses of those responsible for signing them off. Back-handers may or may not feature, the likes of BAE proven to be expert in that department too.

The energy market is another thing that we have to thank Thatcher for, and is something that sticking-plaster socialist governments are unlikely to improve, which is why they are so unpopular ~ like so much of life in the 21st century, they (and it) stand for little else beside handouts, as it’s something simple that requires none of the imagination they lack anyway.

What struck me about it was around the time of the Covid pandemic they said over eighty had gone bust, the best-known of which was ‘Bulb’ although there are many shittier names than that, not least OVO… or new-biological OVO as we expect Germans to call it. This reflects the fact that whereas state-run entities like the electricity boards had to put an infrastructure together, what modern energy firms (and broadband operators) need is a billing system and a silly name. OVO garnered customers with a claim to only use green energy, which you may believe. You may also believe the Earth is flat and the Moon made of cheese, as I do.

If you watch the YouTube channel Economics Help, which is like WWE wrestling to the likes of me, you’ll see how the only real ways that the UK can dig itself out of long-term decline is either by printing money ~ which is like ordering beer during a party that you’ll never be able to pay for ~ or else flogging off the family silver to foreigners. 

As this great green hope has done ~ but who’d blame them when the house is folding?

Ed. More cheery posts soon!

Bathed in Glory

None of which is getting boats built, though this might well be!

Let me touch on it by including the CEO's latest press release:

"I'm delighted to have signed off last thing Friday on this, our first hydrostatic test facility, thought to be the largest in Europe if you don't count the hot-tub next door. It was built by Armitage Shanks, a firm well-known here in the UK for maritime test-facilities as well as gents urinals. And while it cost £16.15 on eBay on a buyer-collect basis, it will be essential in driving the proj forward at a sub-scale that I shall speak more of in the weeks to come. Amen."

Gaining Traction

What a spot on the M6 motorway!

It's an old Nuffield, a 1500cc beauty built in 1969.

Know this from the government's 'Tax Your Vehicle' website ~ so pleased I taxed it for him!