Deaths and U-Turns

Not the Brightest

Following a huge explosion in a gunpowder factory, an inquiry was held. One of the few survivors was questioned and was asked for his account of what happened. The conversation went something like this

      

"Well, sir, it's like this. Old Charley was in the mixing room, and I saw him take a cigarette out of his pocket and light up."

"He was smoking in the mixing room, how long had he been with the company?"

"About 20 years, sir"

"20 years in the company, then he goes and lights a cigarette in the mixing room, I'd have thought it would have been the last thing he'd have done."

"It was, sir." 

News Bites

There is one news items we cannot ignore today, the sad and appalling deaths at the Stoke hospital.


Sometimes we have to think the unthinkable. The country is in a financial mess, and every penny we can save will help.
We have the Liverpool 'Pathway', designed to speed up a patients death and so lesson their discomfort. I guess it will save the Government all those pension payouts that could go on for years and years, not to mention the costs associated with looking after them
I can't help but link these two events. Hundreds of lives lost, Hundreds of pension payouts saved. Could it really have gone unnoticed by the nursing staff, their management, and all the other organisations above them, The Health Trust, The Nursing Bodies, The Medical Bodies and the Governments own Health Ministry.
Could this be a bit of social engineering experiment gone too far? 

Trainer Talk

Still working  on the Front Line Manager Technical Programme Modules.Sadly got distracted by trying to find some graphics for another project.

I also have to comments on the Governments U-turn on education. They have decided to drop the plan to replace GCSEs with an English Baccalaureate,and they are hoping that Chris Huhne's wife will take the blame

Bur seriously, they did have one good idea that the have also U-turned on. The idea of replacing the SEVEN examination bodies with one. Why do we need SEVEN?

China, with its 1.3 billion people can do it with one, so why can't we? In China every child in every school sits down at the same time and sits the same examination paper.

I cannot see any reason why such a tiny country as the the UK cannot do the same. 

Seven bodies, means seven sets of administrators, seven people with inflated salaries to oversee each administration. It can only be jobs for the boys, 

Come on Mr Gove, U-Turn your U-Turn

Thought for the Day?

Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how popular it remains?

Microchip your...

Not the Brightest
A football manager walked into the changing room before the game.  He went over to his new signing and said, 'I'm not supposed to let you play since you failed your maths test, but we really need you today. So, what I am going to do is ask you a maths question, and if you get it right then you will be allowed to play.'

The player agreed, and the manager asked him, "What is two plus two?"

The player thought for a moment and then answered, '4?'

'Did you say 4?' the manager shouted excitedly, 

Suddenly all the other players on the team began shouting..., 'Come on, give him another chance!'

Pet News

So the government are bringing in compulsory 'chipping' of dogs. The article goes on to say that more than 3000 postal workers were attacked by dogs last year. I really do not see how that will be affected by putting a chip in a dog!

If there was a GPS facility in the chip it would be very useful if the dog got lost, but it only works over a few millimetres  . I can see the up side if a lost dog is found, it will be easier to return. But that is the only upside. I am really struggling to see the point of chipping.

Who will get their dogs chipped? The open honest folk that have enough money! 

Who will not get their dogs chipped? Pensioners that can't afford it out of their meagre pensions?Those on benefits who breed dogs as an undeclared sideline?

And what will be the consequence? I can see mass dumping of unchipped dogs, to avoid the fines.
What if your dog escapes, you catch her and she is pregnant? Will we see a new industry growing up for dog abortions? Or will we just find sacks full of abandoned puppies?

What about the cost of policing it. Undoubtedly some councils will already be planning to employ 'chip wardens' to scan every dog they can find.

Finally I suppose, like all government announcements we should ask the questions, Why This? and Why Now?

Are they really interested in this issue, or is it simply to distract us from other things. While we are thinking and writing about dog tagging, we are not thinking and talking about other things, such as 

their friends the bankers and what they did with the LIBOR rate
their minister friends that get their wives to lie about speeding offences
the potential treble dip recession

Trainer Talk

Today I am starting work on the last of the Front Line Manager Technical Programme Modules. It is not due to run until April, but while I have been working on other similar courses, I think my brain is at the right level and in the right mood.

I have just looked at my YouTube video's and have found that I have now broken the 2000 viewings barrier. It sounds good until my daughter tells me she has had over 8,000 views of her minecraft videos.

Yesterday I had a mill call to book courses for 2014, so I have plenty of time to think about that!!

This morning I have also agreed dates for the 4 x 1-week Machineman Development Course, to be run in 2014

Thought for the Day?

99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

The Young have never had it so Bad

Not the Brightest

A policeman pulls a man over for speeding and asks him to get out of the car. After looking closely at the man, he says, "Sir, I notice your eyes are bloodshot. Have you been drinking?" 

The man gets really indignant and says, "Officer, I notice your eyes are glazed. Have you been eating doughnuts?"

Rough News

The headline that caught my eye and ear this morning was 'Generation Theft'. I do feel genuinely sorry for today's young people, 

• Houses prices are too high
• University leaves you crippled with debt
• There are more unemployed than there are jobs
• The gap between the have and the have nots is getting wider
• They are brainwashed into believing that they 'need' the things that they 'want'.

I will expand on these points

A house should be a home and not an investment. Peoples thinking has been twisted by greed. When they see a house, they see '££££' or '$$$$' not HOME. Once we have this different view, then we create competition, which creates demand, which pushes the price up.

There should be no stamp duty on a FIRST house, up to a prescribed value, lets say 100,000 just to illustrate a point.

If a person or company buys a second or third house then they should pay stamp duty on all of them. After all, they can only live in one house at a time,so any other house is a luxury or a business!

As for council tax, whoever had the crazy idea that second homes should only pay half?

If they can afford to buy a second home, they can afford to pay it all! PLUS- House occupants buy things from the local community, and that puts money into the local community. By purchasing a second home and living somewhere else, the house is empty, so that deprives the community of some spending, so money is taken out of the local economy. For that, they should be taxed, say 1.5 times the normal rate of Council tax.


The gap between the have and have nots is very very common in third world countries, I have seen it in many times on my travels. And now I am seeing it more and more here in the UK. Are we slowly sliding into 3rd world status, with our eyes shut?

Finally, the difference between NEED and WANT. We have recently cancelled our subscription TV packages. Why? Because although we sometimes want to watch an occasional programme, we don't NEED, to watch it, plus the time we spend in front of the TV is getting less and less. The children prefer their on line computer games to TV, I am spending more and more time Blogging, answering emails, and writing courses, and my wife does, whatever she does, on her computer

This got me thinking of the crazy things we have been persuaded to do.

Take out insurance for our TV packages in case we are out of a job! - What does this mean? It means we pay money each month to the insurance company, so that, if we become unemployed, the insurance company will pay the subscription for us. In other words we are paying to guarantee the TV companies continue to be paid. What a con!

Buy Newspapers. Have you really looked at a newspaper. More than 50% of the space is adverts. So we are paying for people to try and sell us stuff, and we get a bit of news thrown in, that will be on the TV and internet anyway.

Watch Football.OK it's fun to watch, but it is no longer a game, it's now a business. It is a way of selling us shirts, and scarves, and magazines and a whole range of memorabilia. I have never understood why people that complain they are poor or underpaid will happily give £30/40 each week to people who are multi millionaires.

If we all acted together, instead of only thinking of ourselves, and refused to pay these prices, I bet it would not be long before prices tumbled.

Trainer Talk

In preparation for some work, I was reading all about tea bags! I remember the old days when my grandmother would warm the teapot, and spoon in the loose tea, one spoon per person, and one for the pot. Then fill it up with boiling water and pop on the home made knitted tea cosy. After a while, she would give it a stir, and pour it out via the inevitable tea strainer.We drink a lot of loose Chinese tea's in our house, Jasmine, Oolong, Chrysanthemum etc.,  as well as the traditional tea bags which seem to have insidiously crept into our lives. Clearly they are a neat way of packaging a single dose of tea, but I had really never thought of how they got started.Thomas Sullivan, a New York based Tea Merchant used to send out tea samples in traditional wooden boxes. One day, he had an idea to send them out in hand sewn silk bags, as a novelty. He imagined his customers would simply open the bags and use the tea as normal. But the customers found it easier just to put the bag of tea, as it was, into hot water, and let it brew. They first appeared commercially in 1904

 Thomas Sullivan

Teddy Bears For All

Not the Brightest

A computer programmer had been missing from work for over a week when finally

someone noticed and decided to check up on him.

They went round to his flat and had to break down the door. They found him dead in the shower with the water still running, There was an empty bottle of shampoo next to his body. Apparently he'd been washing his hair.

The instructions on the bottle said:

* Wet hair 

* Apply shampoo 

* Wait 2 minutes 

* Rinse 

* Repeat

Cute News

There is a lot of 'heavy' news today, so I thought a little light heartedness was called for. I was reading in the news this morning about Teddy Bears!

The writer was discussing the obituary of Sir Robert Clark. At the age of 2 he was given a bear, that he named Falla. It stayed with him throughout his life. Even when he was in the military, and was parachuted behind enemy lines, Falla was with him, tucked into his battledress. It even stayed with him when he was a prisoner of war. After the war he became a government advisor, but never lost his ardour for Teddy Bears, and became a collector of them, amassing over 300.

I wonder how many men today would be brave enough to admit they even liked Teddy Bears, let alone collected them?

But do we all know how the Teddy Bear came into being?

The story is, that US President Theodore (Teddy), Roosevelt was out hunting American Black Bears. Some friends caught one, tied it to a tree and told the president to shoot it. He refused because it was so unsporting.

This story got out, it got turned into a cartoon that made all the newspapers, and was seen by Morris Michtom. Morris had a day job, but make extra money at night by making stuffed animals along with his wife.

Having gained the Presidents permission, he made a bear, which he sold as 'Teddy's Bear'. It was an immediate hit. Over the years the name changed slightly and became Teddy Bear

Trainer Talk

Well, here is the finished pile of notes for next week. It doesn't look much here, but each is about 350 pages. It will take 4 x 1-week sessions to get through.

Other tasks for today are to try and finish my application to become an examinations centre for the Process Awards Authority, and to buy a company!  More about that later.

Gay marriage - What a fuss?

Not the Brightest

The Los Angeles Police Department, The FBI, and the CIA were all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it.

The CIA went in.
They placed animal informants throughout the forest.
They questioned all plant and mineral witnesses.
After three months of extensive investigations they concluded that rabbits do not exist.

The FBI went in.
After two weeks with no leads they burnt the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies.
The rabbit had it coming.

The LAPD went in.
They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear.
The bear is yelling: "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit! I'm a rabbit!"

News Crazy

The news story that caught my ear this morning was all the fuss over gay marriage.

Lets start at the beginning. Nature is a random thing, which is essential for our survival. If we did not have natures randomness, then we would all be black with black curly hair. All the women would look exactly alike, and all the men would look exactly alike.

The randomness of nature causes variations, and this is important for when change in the environment happens. Some variants will react well to the change, and thrive. Other variants will react badly and die out. Nature is not sexist, racist or ageist, well maybe a bit ageist. Nature does not care about religion, it is only concerned with survival. By creating as many variants as possible, nature is doing its best for the survival of the human race.

One of natures variants is homosexuality, and I am guessing that most gay people are gay because nature has made them that way. I would also guess that a few 'gay' people are so because it is fashionable, or just an attempt to be different and provocative. But lets stick to the honest gays, gays as nature intended.

Gay couples cannot breed, so that is natures way of ensuring that particular gene does not survive, so that 'strain' of human will die out. There is nothing wrong with them adopting children, adoption does not pass on the gene.

Maybe one day, nature will throw in another variation that will allow them to breed, but it has not happened yet.

Now let us drag ourselves back to the original story.

Gays have been demanding equality and tolerance. I agree, they should be treated no different than any heterosexual. BUT, in return they should be equally tolerant of the larger society and establishments.

If they want to have a Church ceremony, I agree they should be allowed to, BUT, they should be equally tolerant as they are asking us to be. The ceremony should be performed by a person that wants to perform it, not someone that is doing it because it is against the law not to.

So, Parliament, MPs and gays, lets agree - those that want to perform a ceremony in church should be allowed to do so, and those that do not want to perform a ceremony  should be allowed to walk away.

I have deliberately kept away from the words marriage and wedding. My personal belief is that these two words are associated with ceremonies that involve one male and one female. I only have this personal belief because that is how it has been for hundreds of years.

Today's technological society is moving very fast. New things are being made all the time and we have to keep inventing new words to describe and define all these new things. The first sound recording was on a 'phonograph, a cylinder made of tin foil. Then there was wax cylinders, vinyl records, CDs, and now flash drives. As all these new things came out, we did not insist that they were all called a phonograph, just because they all recorded and played back sound. We invented new words for the new thing

So why not do that for marriage? The gays should show some tolerance for the heterosexuals, and leave our words for us. They should move on, and find a new word for this new situation.

Trainer Talk

All files for the next Machineman's Development Course are finally printed out, it just remains to bind them.

Was up at 7 this morning as my daughter decided that 7am was the best time to finish her homework, and she needed my assistance. 

The Lenovo  computer has now been away for repair for longer than we actually used it.

Have a good day

More tomorrow

Not the Brightest

Good morning world, It is a lovely sunny Saturday morning, so nothing heavy. Lets start off with a little joke before moving on.

Not the Brightest

A man in prison gets a letter from his dad. The letter says: ‘Dear son, now that you’re in jail, I have no one to weed my garden.’ The son writes a letter back, saying: ‘Dad, you can’t weed the garden. That’s where I buried the bodies.’ The police intercept the letter and learn that there are bodies hidden in the dad's garden. A team of forensic officers spend two weeks digging it up. They find nothing. Dad gets another letter some time later from the son: ‘Dear Dad. Sorry, that was the best I could do.’

The Reunion

For weeks now, I have been looking forward to a reunion. Sadly of all the people that turned up, only one person from my old class was there, but on the positive side, there was no-one to interfere (or overhear) with our reminiscences. We had a really good laugh about the 'Egg Round', the 'Paper Round' and the 'Milk Round'. If he ever reads this Blog, I am sure he will laugh out loud. For the rest of you, I'm afraid it will have to remain one of life's mysteries. But you can enjoy speculating!!!

Memories of camping in Kearsley Park, flooded back. listening to Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky.And Simon and Garfunkles Bridge over Troubled Waters  We all laughed at the twins, who had no idea how to use a can opener to open a can of beans. I hope that the YouTube link works, if it does, please enjoy a piece of pop history. NOTE TO SELF - add these to your YouTube collection

I am finding typing a little strange this morning,I keep hitting all the wrong keys, wonder if it has something to do with the beer I drank last night. Or maybe I'm just tired, hadn't drunk so much for ages, had to get up 6 times in the night to pee. I think I am a drinking lightweight now.

News Crazy

UK news story of the day,- people are putting the wrong sort of rubbish into street waste bins, household waste for example.

What is the councils answer to this ? - Its obvious really, - lets remove the waste bins.

So, lets back track on this story a little, so we can see the full picture

OBSERVATION 1 The council stop weekly household rubbish collection, and now collect every two weeks

(so I guess their bins get over full? Maybe full to overflowing?)

OBSERVATION 2   Household rubbish suddenly starts appearing in bins on the street

(Could there be a connection between household bins getting over full and household rubbish appearing in street bins? Of course not stupid! It's a purely random act, a coincidence!)

OBSERVATION 3   Councils remove the bins from the streets.

( I wonder what will happen next. COUNCILLORS please place your right index finger in your right ear and shout very loudly the word RED - backwards 

Sugar Sugar or Sugar raguS ??

I was talking with my friend Techy Tim yesterday. He called me to ask about the structure of cellulose. What a good idea for a Blog I thought

Don't be put off, I think you will find it interesting, especially when we get to the bit about potatoes?

There are many different types of sugar, the white crystals that we heap into our tea and coffee is a sugar called sucrose.Honey is sweet because it contains two different sugars, sucrose, and fructose. Another interesting sugar is maltose. Does that word sound a bit familiar? Malt whiskey, malted milk, malty tasting beer? Maltose is a type of sugar produced during the fermentation of grail to make those nice alcoholic products we like to drink. I guess its been a long time since any of us tasted breast milk. If we could remember, we would find that it was sweet, that's one reason babies are attracted to it. The sweetness is due to a sugar called lactose, hence the term lactating mothers.

But what has all this got to do with papermaking? Well, there is one important sugar I have not mentioned yet. GLUCOSE. Glucose is in all the energy drinks, it is the sugar that the body converts into energy. It is also the basic building block in all plants.

All plants, from the humble snowdrop to the giant redwood trees use the same process. They take in chemicals from the air and the soil, and they convert them into millions of little glucose molecules. Its rather like a brick factory producing millions of identical bricks. The only difference is that each end of a brick is the same, with glucose molecules, each end is slightly different.

So a plant is rather like two factories, one factory, as I have said, makes the glucose molecules. The other factory sticks them all together to make long thin chains, or sometimes branched chains.

If the assembly line puts all these glucose molecules together in the same way, like this

-SUGAR-SUGAR-SUGAR-SUGAR-

We get, what we call starch. Starch is the energy store of the plant. A potato is a good example of a plants energy store. I will return to the potato later.

If the plant assembles the glucose molecules in a different way, like this:

-SUGAR-RAGUS-SUGAR-RAGUS- 

Then the material it produces behaves in a very different way, this is what we call cellulose. This is the structural part of the plants, the leaves and stems and trunks of trees for example.

In the starch example there is a R-S 'bond' that joins up all the individual glucose molecules. The enzymes in our bodies can break that bond, releasing the individual sugar molecules that our body can then convert to energy.

In the cellulose chains the joining groups are different, half are R-R and half are S-S. Our body cannot break them, so they pass right through us. This is what we call fibre, and this is what helps the poo slide through!

Thios is also what makes the individual fibres that make paper!