30th November 2020

It is very interesting that
Billy Monger
was not comentating on yesterday's
Formula 1 Grand Prix of motor racing
we re told that a driver and half his car
went through Armco
we have seen some curtailed images
so we don't know what happened
we are kinda sitting here and saying
is it a total waste of time asking
How in God's name did the dratted
Halo
do for Grosjean
what nothing did for Billy Monger
preserve his
LEGS
Grosjean was saved by the safety cell
he was not
touched
by the impact
and the parts of the safety cell below the windscreen
dashboard, whatever
punched a hole in the Armco
otherwise
the lad would now be about three feet shorter
he got out because
the steering wheel disintegrated
it fell apart and did not embed itself in his face
Here's a code
what does it mean?
1N 1O 1L 1M
2X 2G 2F 2K 2J 3X
3G 3F 3K 3J
4X 4C 4B 4A
5X 5G 5F 5J 5L
L6R L6A L6S
6A U6A 6S U6S

we are not quite sure
the last line mean
six art, upper six art, six science, upper six science
the next line up means
lower six remove, lower six art, lower six science
the next line up means
in reverse order
fifth Latin, three streams not doing Latin
the clas who failed the 11plus but passed the 12 plus
got too big for their boots at the County Modern
These are the forms at Coatham Grammar in the
academic year 1969 - 70
three or four years earlier they would have been
1A 1B 1C
2A 2B 2C 2X
3L 3A 3B 3X
4L 4A 4B 4X
5L 5A 5B 5X
a managed transition to the end of
streaming in secondary schools
the numbers would now, perhaps, be
10 up to 17
who knows?
anybody with a close association with schools
in other words we have moved from disguising
streaming by ability
to disguising
age
what age is a year eleven pupil?
under the age of consent and
that's all you need to know
apparently
if they are a year eleven pupil they are probably 16
and that would for some purposes be
adult
perish the thought
but some may think they are only eleven
year eleven pupil does such and such
is intended to sound like
eleven year old does such and such
it is a part of the defence mechanism of adults
who find themselves
small and less well educated than the next generation
most people these days can't actually get into
classic cars of the 1960s
have you got another roller skate for my other foot?
some pupils return to their old school to teach
but a lot seek out a school where they expect to feel
superior
there are about 6 million residents of
London
almost all of them are
complete morons
that is not the problem
the problem is that their knowledge of their neighbours
and their belief that
everybody in London is better than everybody else
leads them to conclude that
everybody living outside the M25
London's orbital motorway
is a knickle dragging neanderthal
and thay move to their schools to
attempt to prove it
Londoners don't have a high regard for other Londoners
they just believe they are the best of a
bad bunch
and seek to naild down and wall out the provincials and
strengthen London stock by
importing
wiley oriental gentlemen
chuck out the chintz
chuck out the occidental
bring in the oriental
as in
The Orient Express
Ricker's teachers always sought to convince his parents thay he was
an idiot
he has always had a home on or near the
Rivers Estate
and every day he walked to and from school past a road sign
so he concluded that
7 was spelt SEVERN
in later times - parents' evening
all TGP the O'level physics teacher could say was
look he's spelt melting as mealting
clearly a moron
here's crux of that
both Ricker's parents left school at 14
so one could say that his teachers were trying to
communicate with his parents on
their level
the level of living in Redcar
not the level of being managing director of a
stock exchange listed company
and a former
NAAFI manager
TGP once asked Ricker
how did you get into this school/
is your uncle one of the teachers or something
Seth is my sister's father-in-law
not said
and that's why I'm here and not at
Archbishop Holgate's in York as the council wanted
or St. Peter's York where his brothers went
There was a librarian poet in Hull who had parents off
Philip Larkin

Ricker had at one time
three nephews and two nieces
one of the nieces was killed
apparently quite incidentlly
by a nutter on the day he was released from the funny farm
her car just got in his way
she or her husband stopped at traffic lights and
the utter decided not to
he, in the larger car survived
a couple of parents died in a ball of flame
that would be
Annelise Storrar in Reading
beside that point
he had a younger and elder
niece
but
one of his nephews was a thw son of a brother
the other two were sons of his sister
so
the middle nephew is his sister's elder son
and the other one is
Ricker's eldest nephew but
the elder of his brother's two children
younger elder
younger middle eldest
younger second third eldest
all to do with BBC news readers
moonlighting on the
English Language Service
in breaks from the day job at
BBC Hindi or BBC Arabic

speaking of Ricker's nephews
one is a graduate
his father was a graduate
the other two are not graduates
their father Bristol, and one of their grandfathers Leeds
are graduates
but
no Brownie Points for teachers getting the children of graduates
into university
although one was at Surrey but got thrown out
this being because ???
mission priority of UK Universities is
provide sheltered employment for vulnerable people
as lecturers
now with all teaching being
on line
perhaps young people who
know their arse from their elbow will
get a look in
if they are muted on Zoom and
don't scare the horses



Our Ricker does not want to appear
self richeous
or even self seeking but he was under pressure
towands the end of his first year ay medical school
he was travelling home on a Wednesday lunchtime
and travelling back to uni on a Thursday morning
so that he could keep an eye on his demented parents
he was quite clear that it was right and proper that
his girlfriend
Gwynneth Dakers
should not help him with their care
but should follow her dream as she went off to
Harwell to be an engineering apprentice
the university put pressure on
they rejected his application to
intercollate
a science degree into his medical studies
and regarded it as the hight of insolence that he suggest that
his father was senile
we did not have
dementia in our vocabulary although there was a hint when
Uncle Will Gilinder
arrived from Canada
on the premiss that
having developed Alzheimers
he was having a last trip around old haunts
and so
Gwyneth didn't becoem a dentisy's wife
but she did become a nuclear scientist
was that galant of our Ricker
and
when the wife of Ricker's youngest nephew was assigned
under her medical physics degree at Surrey
to do a project under Gwenneth supervisions
she cried off
citing illness
and so
whatever happened to Rcker
t was not exactly
Sliding Doors
movie reference
plenty of people had opportunities to
put Ricker back on track

23rd November 2020

it was the Bliar government that set off the latest round of
university expansion
some think it was his wife Cherry Booth
who pushed for it to
make sure their were places for her kids....
and here is the division between two factions in
UK higher education
one lot is focussed on
make as many people as possible GRADUATES
before the second we will add the variant on the first
people who see or saw
the expansion of university education as an extension of
ROSLA
raising of the school leaving age
a way to tackle
youth unemployment
without creating jobs
did some of those people think
if all these girlies go to uni
they'll have kids of their own before they graduate
and thus become
economically inactive and
never join the unemployed?
the other group is still represented by Oxford University
the only seat of power learning in the UK
we would cqll it the
Jungle Book principle
from the song from the animation version
I wanna be a man, man cub
clue me what to do
I've reached the top and had to stop
and that's what's bothering me
show me the secret of man's red fire
the idea here is
take your randomly selected representatives of
the Great Unwashed
and send them somewhere nice for
sections of three or four years
and they will
using their inate guile and intelligence
discover the secrets of
how rich people come to be rich
no secret
Oxford undergrads are rich because
their daddies are rich
and they
HAVE PEOPLE
to make money
FOR them
in a sense we are seeing that this experiment in
testing the theory that
poor people are poor because they are poor
is faltering
in a sense the theory is about
playing both ends against the middle
the theory being that
the middle classes generate the wealth
the rich parasitise that because they
own the means of production
and the poor do not profit from anything because
education and skills don't run in their family
and if we gave them free education and training
from tutors outside their
family and friends network
they could all lift themselves into the middle class
and so the idea that - rich or not - if you could
capture the people with the smarts - like our Ricker
and set them to work
like some Russian Tsar locking up a wizard
until he invents a spendid version of
ceramics or glass
then the skills gap would end and
everybody would live happily ever after
the trouble now is that we are seeing the concept of
expanded knowledge and skills crumble
with the advance of concepts such as
no platforming
we are moving towards a concept of
sacred cows
in the Asian sub continent
somewhere cattle are unmolested
roam everywhere and do what they like
and in the UK these days
the authorities are giving up on the idea of
people from the lower orders being
reformable, educable, trainable
and just let them roam and put up with the cost of
clearing up after them
and a few deaths from
drug dealing and vandalism
are a price worht paying to avoid the accusation that
you are upsetting the underprivilaged
we are going to tell a story here about a dentist
without his permission
In Redcar there used to be a dental prctice called
Dixon and Power
at some point Mr Power went into semi retirement
offering a
dentures at home service
going to the homes of aged and infirm people to take impressions
and have false teeth made up
his partner
Herbert Robson Dixon
moved the practice from rooms above
Goodswens is it ?
the butchers opposite where B and M moved from
to a house in the town that he converted into a dental practice
it's quite a big house and because it originally had
pink carpets
Ricker calls it the pink palace
two main floors plus attick and basement
double fronted
now Herbie is not a
natural born dentist
when he left school he went
thinking of the local petrochemical industry
to Newcastle Polytechnic and got himself a
First Class degree in
chemical engineering
and then he thought
maybe dentistry, and retrained
with all apologies to former staff of
Dixon and Power...
Herbie went to the trouble of setting up the pink palace
so that
the dentist(s) and the other staff could have
separate staff room facilities
a female dentist may have been able to
put up with the constant chatter about
boyfriends and babies
but
here's the contrast
such things may drive men up the wall but
they are not permitted to complain
if you don't like the heat
build yourself your own kitchen
but women
they can register any little thing as
something that has
upset them
men certainly wouldn't be allowed to say
shut up and drink yer coffee
if you re dental nurse you will pick up a thng or two about dentistry
nurses married to dentists have got into big trouble in the past for
treating their husbands' patients
in a sense
if we had a system that
entirely divorced examnation and certification from
training
that would cut the finaces from under the feet of universities
but
taking Amy the dental nurse
left dental nursing to
do a degree at Teesside University
as preparation for becoming a
paramedic
maybe paramedics are paid more than dental nurses but
there is something rather random about
what jobs need the aproval of a university
and which you can do if you pass the exams
was Amy doing the reverse of what Herbie did
she saw helself as
queen of an ambulance
rather than a scribe and fetcher in the dentists
do you really think that Amy needed a degree to
take charge of medical emergencies
but couldn't have a dental degree because
Teesside University is true to it's traditions
and unlike The University of Sunderland
don't want none of them clever people around here?
Teessde - the place where
cops are cock of the walk
and
teaching assistants are queen of the middin
compost heap
how many 'deprived people' are deprived because
they are
ignorant fond
aware that with knowledge and skills comes
responsibility
or are they just in need of being bunged even more
cash and food
?
we're gonna do an experiment
we are going to enter
Super Mac
into a Google search
remember we are doing this in the UK
result
Super mac may refer to
Harold Macmillan
1894 - 1986
Prime Minister of UK 1957 - 1963
Malcolm Supermac McDonald
born 1950
then we go to Supermac n Irish fast food chain
Macdonald is Newcastle's 5th highest goal scorer of all time
did he actually work for comedian Tommy Trinder when he was at Fulham?
scored 6 goals for England between 1972 and 1975
there was this other guy called
Malcolm MacDonald
OM PC - Order of Merit Privy Councilor
17 Aug 1901 to 11 January 1981
Govenor General of Kenya
succeeded bu
Jomo Kenyatta as President 12 Dec 1964
UK Minister of Health 13 May 1940 to 8 Feb 1941
Political party
Labour
National Labour
aside from all that WORK
Malcolm Macdonald had two claims to fame
he was Ramsay Macdonald's son - only son 3 sisters
and he
signed our Ricker's degree certificate
we just remembered
Castle is the Durham University name for
University College, Durham
Ramsay MacDonald was the first member of the
UK Labour Party to
become Prime Minister of the UK
and James Ramsay MacDonald
was born
James MacDonald Ramsay
now this name thing
we can't find a reference but as we recall....
one young future politician was out in the fields with his
single mother
one day
and she turns to him and says
yon's yer featha
that man over there is your father
it may have been Ramsay Mac
he never saw the man again
and
and our Ricker's grandad
William Robson
was a prominent
Liberal Politician
on Teesside
and these people have long memories


Sir Derman Christopherson was vice chancellor
now
if our Ricker had graduated 5 years later
he would have got an autograph of
Dame Margot Fonteyn
First non-royal female chancellor of a British University
more recent cert have carried the names
Sir Peter Ustinov
Bill Bryson
Sir Thomas Allen - operatic baritone
still in post
3rd January 2019
Cuddly Ken
Ken Bowler - Ricker's colleg or moral tutor, died
You can search
town versus gown
and you get reference to
Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and St Andrews
in one sense Oxford in the 1970s is the classic
divided between
dreaming spires
and
donkey jacketed thugs
nailing the infamous British Leyland cars together
and Durham is
effete students
versus
salt of the earth coal miners
and the area around Durham University was very involved in
the closing of the coal mines around the time our Ricker was there
That wasn't the real cause of Ricker's problems
up until 1963 what is now
The University of Newcastle upon Tyne
was
King's College, Durham
when it was hived off as a stand alone university
Durham university had colleges
and lecture theatres in Durham and
a rather splendid
geography department
this means that science departments such as zoology and botany
were built up in the ten years before Ricker arrived
from Newcastle, where he had studied at the medical school
he wasn't exactly
poached
but
1 a lot of the teaching staff were hired as a job lot from
Hull University
and the department was housed in the former
colliery offices at the pit where the campus was built
and so
Christopher Higgins is a bit younger than Ricker
but Higgins was a Royal College of Music dropout - violin
and Ricker was a Newcastle medical school dropout
and they did boyany and zoology foundation in the same year
it was a kind of four option joint honours deal
for honours you had to choose two from
no THEY chose for you
two from
animal physiology
animal ecology
plant physiology
plant ecology
they put Ricker into the zoology department
and Higgins into the botany department
people cold have done
zoology, botany, ecology, or physiology
so Higgins did botany and later a thesis on
the chemistry of barley seed germination
and so to our Ricker
he had a tutor Dave Hyde
who had done a masters in neurophysiology at
Manchester
and under his supervision Ricker did an honours project
measuring the electrical activity of the
buccal ganglion of the
water snail
limnea stagnalis
dissect your pond snail
remove it's mouth
remove the seven cell ganglion that controls the mouth
suck up the cut ends of the cut nerves into saline filled
microfine glass tubes - that you have to make for yourself
and record the impulses by
running photographic film past the screen of
an oscilloscope that has had its
x drive switched off
the spot move up and down and the film moves left to right
Ricker is very very very old
problem
Dave already had a research student part way through his
Ph.D. even though Dave didn't have a Ph.D. of his own
so
apply to places such as Bristol
dillema Durham wants to buid up a research reputation
they don't want Ricker poached
plot, ploy, give Ricker a rubbish degree and the offer of
a job for life as a University funded - not reseach council funded
reseach assistant for moral tutor Ken Bowler
Ricker understood
but his demented dad didn't
sold the house from under him for failing
so
Ken had been house mates at Hull Uni with
Roy Hattersley, and an embryologist called Jack Cohen
and a school teacher called Mike Jackson
head of science at
Gillbrook school in Eston on Teesside
so Ricker's punishment for not
taking the job for life at Durham university
was
a job for life as science department technician at Gillbrook
he stayed for 5 years
elderly resident will remember
Lurch
Adams Family reference
when Christopher Higgins was a fellow student of Ricker
he was a complete dork
he would enter a seminar room clutching a
violin case
as one would a teddy bear
he did botany not zoology and was next heard of
on TV with a hand painted sign on a broom cupboad door
in the University of Dundee
the sign sai something about
BSE
bovine spongieform encephalopathy
Ricker had - to cut a long story short - just
proclaimed that BSE was related to
grass staggers
an illness due to trying to get too much milk production out of
too few cows
hell at the time an opened bottle of milk stank out the 'fridge
with acetone
keytosis
and then when the day came
Christopher Higgins vice chancellor Durham University
2014 'took early retirement'
replaced by his deputy at short notice
we mean the professor of geography stood in for him for a year
whilst the university got around to appointing
the present vice-chancellor - Stuart Corbridge
to replace Higgins
got him from the LSE
London School of Economics not stock exchange
we can say CH has five daughters and two ex wives
he was summerily sacked at a 'board meeting' at the university
we suspect that he had a dementia related melt down at that meeting
but that he had been extracted from that Dundee broom cupboard
to front the refutation of what our Ricker had said about BSE
speaking truth onto power is
just a tad risky



Peyer's patches are small masses of lymphatic tissue
found throughout the ileum region of the small intestine
aggregated lymphoid nodules
they include macrophages, dendritic cells
T cells and B cells
and
M cells
M cells feed antigens to the macrophages and dendritic cells

adenoids are part of the immune system
which helps fight infection and protects the body from
bacteria and viruses
we have established that
the younger the child the less they are affected by
CoViD
children have - pound for pound - a lot more
adenoid tissue than adults
in a now rare bacterial infection called
diphtheria
children's adenoids reacted and swelled so much that
many became mouth breathers
some died from obstruction of the airway
cutting out the adenoids when they have swolen to become
adenoids tonsils , same thing?
similar in location and function
taking out tonsila nd adenoid tissue is common
takes half an hour
one hour recovery
a project for the number crunchers
what proportion of people who have real problems with CoViD
had previously
had their tonsils out?

President Obama had a beef about this
surgeons - not necessarily highly skilled surgeons
tend to do twice as many tonsilectomies if they are on
payment per service
or pay per operation
than if they are salaried
America has had a bg problem with CoViD
if you have a country or community where
tonsils get taken out at high frequency
do the people involved not have the ability to
pump antibodies out of the bloodstream
and into the nasal cavity?
cut the infections that lead to the sore throats
don't cut out the valient tonsils trying to protect you
tonsilectomies are the surgical equivalent of
taking the battery out of the smoke alarm?


while we have your attention
we are not going to check
Ricker is feeling grumpy
it's too windy for work
he is not going to check, just guess
we said some time ago that in one disease
was it cholera?
it is usless having antibodies in the blood stream
they have to be mixed in with the gut contents
because the disease kills by making the gut wall
dysfunctional
runs and dehydration and that
what we can see as a POSSIBLE scenario is a vaccine that
keeps the innoculated healthy but
leaves the virus untouched in the
nose and throat
and if it is given preferentially to
healthcare workers
they will be able to work
but they will become
superspreaders
carriers
it's a worry
and so...
it would be less or a worry if you took swabs from nose and throat
as well as blood samples
when testing for
efficacy
probably they re doing that
those result would be crucial
antibody not antigen tests of
nose and throat samples of people carrying antibodies in their blood



The only time our Ricker ever walked down the aisle
with a partner was
not walking down the aisle it was
walking up the aisle
when Ricker graduated his dad didn't attend
his dad sat in the car nearby
Ricker's mam and her step mother were his guests
and after the graduation ceremony
a procession across
Palace Green
because the graduation had been to the
Great Hall of Castle
Durham Castle
Castle is a Durham University college
Not Ricker's
a procession from the Great Hall
across Palace Green
into Durham Cathedral
for a blessing
and he walked up the aisle alonside
J J K Wright
and she was not too chuffed either
a couple of loosers
Ricker with his third
and Jo with her lower second
never to meet again
and Tiny Rowland had been there right then
apparently alone..
to watch
Jane Rowland
is there a w in that?
get her degree and nat it was an
upper second
and Richardson
who was at Castle
got the first
but that was only consolation for his brothers
graduating from Oxford or Cambridge
It was a great day
was Ricker's dad not in the hall because
he was ashamed of the lad who had failed?
we don't think we will ever know
what Ricker knows is what his tutor said
that would be Dave Hyde
not Ken Bowler
Dave said
you've seen the list?
well all this
the degree classifications and the ceremony
it's for the parents
not for the students
end quote
there are difficulties
we now live in a very different world
we have no statistics for this but
numbers for
how many parents of graduates
are graduates themselves?
40 or 50 years ago they used to say
there are more scientists alive today - then
than have ever died
and perhaps it is still true
a university such as Durham awards degrees by class
according to its own needs
to in a way compensate the students for whom their
student days will be the high light of their lives
and then - for example
ten to twenty years ago
supermarket Morrisons had a graduate entry
management trainee scheme
and just this blanket entry criterion
upper second class honours or above
if top universities are classifying students according to a sort of
there will be no loosers
system where smart graduates are expected to
make a life on merit without a flash degree as a crutch
and employers are saying
millions of graduates
we won't consider
the half that 'failed'
and if we make more and more avenues in life
for instance optometry
graduate entry only
two things
a lot of talent goes to waste
a lot of people considered in need of
a false sense of self worth
PM Tweedledee for instance
get itno jobs they can't do
when Ricker was at school there were two lads called
Smith in his class
both represent important object lessons
D W Smith was a boarder
the other Smith was a day boy as was Ricker
D W was sometimes known as DW
but his fellow boarders knew him as
Bol
and Bol stood for
barrel on legs
and so that was, by today's standards
bullying
fat shaming
the other Smith was a copper's kid
one day in a physics lab this Smith tried
very forcible to stuff some of his
prescription pills into Ricker's mouth
his libs could not resist the force and he had to
clench his teeth to keep the pills out
underlying that was an unspoken message
if you weren't in my class
I wouldn't need these tranquilisers to cope with the stress of
having
a smart arse like you in my life
we have caught a hint about the
Grenfell debacle
the consequences of powerful people making snap decisions
Thresa May as Prime Minister was aske what was the
naughtiest thing she had ever done and she said
trampling a corn field
well another thing she did was to commission a report
based on stunts designed to convince peope that the
Grenfell Tower fire was lethal because of the choice of
aluminium cladding
it is now emerging that it was the foam insulation behind the cladding
that melted the plastic window frames and let the heat jump from
inside one flat to the inside of one above
when the fire fighters had been assured that
a fire would always be confined to
whaever single flat it started in
over confident reliance on the idea that
all will be well
and the constant constant drive that
we must
Buy American
the two priorities
don't blame the brave fire fighters
don't get into a law suit with the Americans
blame it all on some random British engineer
what is important here is
when all these tower blocks have
their prefectly servicable cladding replaced
will the combustible foam insulation behind it
be left in place?



We've had a few stories about consumer goods
tumble driers, cars, that sort of thing that
burst into flames in normal use
we think that is a problem
we get stories - especially about the cars
relating to a few cars being involved
maybe a dozen
out of thousands manufctured and sold
this sort of thing leads to a
re-call
for modifications
we are being told that two of the vaccines in development
have a 90 to 95 effectiveness rating
what does that mean?
it means that large large numbers
tens and hundreds of thousands of people are given the vaccine
and
ninty per cent of them
don't get CoViD within a couple of weeks of getting the jab
these people are just given the jab
nothing else except instructions to report any problems
they are not NOT deliberately infected with CoViD
and so
between five and ten per cent of people given the vaccine
devlop CoViD withing two or three weeks...
and the question is
how many of their friends and family
who were not vaccinated
develop CoViD
in the same time slot?
in other words
the real test of the vaccines is
and we are sure that some trials are structured this way
you get a load of volunteers together and
you give
half of them a 'flu jab
and half of them a 'flu jab AND a CoViD jab
and you see how many get CoViD
does the CoViD jab alter the proportion getting CoViD?
those data may exist but they are not what has been published
this means we have data on whether the vaccines are
SAFE
amongst other things, in not causing CoViD
but not on how effective they are
this is perhaps an example of
mission creep
what the world wants is a vaccine that protects us from the virus
simple as
what the drug companies have c oncentrated on is producing a vaccine that
induces the production of antibodies
and so we suppose that these companies have tested their
volunteers to see whether they have produced antibodies
and between 90 and 95 per cent of them have
that's
proof of concept
proof that for most people the method produces antibodies
that is in a way
academic
since we are told that we still have the prospect of
Jeremy Corbin as Prime Minster
we should deploy an allotment analogy
just because you don't have ny pests in your front garden
or amongst your house plants
does not mean to say that your allotment isn't a
breeding ground
deluging the world withall sorts of pests
and in this analogy your nose and mouth are your allotment



beauty is in the eye of the beholder
one day Ricker was asked to lend a coleague
his trolly jack so that the coleague could jack up
another coleague's mini
the jack went straight through the car's rotten sub frame
the intermediary - not the car owner - decided that
Ricker should loan one of his cars - his father's perhaps
to the car owner because of the damage the tool had done
that intermediary was
An Elder of the Jehova's Witnesses
a lot of people like that live in a
parallel universe
it can be quite a shock to realise that you live just down the road from
communities where it is fervantly believed that
taking a photo of a child
puts they in mortal danger
but sharing a home with a child and
doing a load of drugs
is super fine, perfectly OK
and so to the main stream media
such a shame that girl died because somebody bought her drugs
and at the same time
that bloke aske a child for a photo
sex offenders register for life, indeterminate sentence,
chemical castration
fling the lot at him
people in the media can't claim to be
not all there
as people on sink estates can
what gives?

16th November 2020

we are now seeing a contrast being drawn between
lockdown versus vaccine
let's make that more visible
let's imagine a
plague of mice in Australia
two strategies
issue every household with
either a cat
or mouse traps
alternatively
hire a load more opertives for the
local authority
environmental health
pest control teams
vaccination is like the mouse traps and cats
and lockdown is like the professionals
so long as the mice stay outside people's homes
they will be safe if there is no
professional pest control
the mice don't thrive in the fields
where the birds would get them
they don't thrive in the homes where the cats and
the mouse traps would get them
they thrive in the barns
and for our virus
the nose is their barn
sometimes we drop in an analogy without
exploring it properly
we talked about SARS and 'flu and such being
a wart in the nose
HPV - human papiloma virus is responsible for
warts as such
the skin can also be affected by
perhaps we should have said
corona viruses are the nasal equivalent of
molluscum contagiosum
never heard of it?
neither have we but it is a better analogy because
it normally clears up without treatment
and
can spread to other parts of the body
and that is what corona virus is doing
lots of people have
unrecognised infection and rcover without knowing they were ill
say you have mice under the patio decking
or under the garden shed
so ling as you never see them and they leave no
obvious traces in you home
you may never know you have them
and so the virus can live above, outside the influence of
your immune system and so
two things
if you have a cat that you never let out
the mice will be safe from the cat
or if you have a dog instead of a cat
a dog wants rabbits, not mice
the immune system is we would say
M!5 not MI6
it is the Home Office not the FCO
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
the immune system does not partol the outer surfaces of your body
and these include lots of little nooks and crannies
crevices
the body
for external security purposes
1 secretes lactic acid and similar chemicals
and
2 hires in help from friendly forces
bacteria and the like that live on the
functional outside - including crevices
of your body and are your
bouncers
door staff
f the door staff encounter a novel intruder
they may let it in
evolving a fresh door staff workforce may be
just as important a response to a novel infection as
a modification to the immune system
regarding HPV
say you are a farmer and you have and need as car
and your car fails
being a farmer you do twoo unusual things
you park the old car in a barn and you buy a new car
and every time the fuel tank runs empty you do the same
a virus - such as the human papiloma virus - messe up a skin cell
the body produced a new clean skin cell and expects the contaminated one to be
rubbed off
in the crevices the oily and acidic secretion combine with the door staff to
create a substance that is a bit like soft cheese and smelly
there are cultures - Jewish most famously - where there is such as horror of
people playing with their crevices
that
male and female circumcision is used in an attempt to
abolish or smooth out bodily crevices
for the most part
apart from Ancient Egyptians dealing with preparing the dead for burial
most cultures leave the convolutions up the nose
well alone
and so
one way and another parasites do best if they settle in the nose
but
clearly species other than humans don't take a knife to their young
and so we have non-surgical approaches to tennants in our faces
serous - tears
and
mucus -snot
secretions including chemicals such as lysozyme
so we can see a parasitic virus
thrown out by the bouners
without the inside security ever knowing there was
trouble at the door
and they get thrown out
not arrested or eliminated and
become somebody else's problem
the stuff that builds up if you don't
play with yourself if called
smegma
hence
smeg head
Red Dwarf sci-fi commedy reference
person with smegma for brains
and consternation that anybody would launch and develop a
range of domestic appliances called
smeg



there are three steelworks towns in England
or england and Wales
for the moment we will park Scunthorpe
Redcar is shut down
Port Talbot is presently capable of producing
5 million tonnes of steel from two blast fuurnaces
if Redcar were running it would produce
3 million tonnes from one blast furnace
in both towns all other blast furnaces have been demolished
1 and 2 and 3 in Port Talbot
and
all - probably 2 - at South Bank in Redcar
gone
here is the proposal
here are the options
1 keep Redcar cold or demolish it
2 keep Port Talbot 4 and 5 running on coal and coke
3 scrap Port Talbot 4 and 5 and
4 produce 5 million tonnes of steel in Port Talbot using
electric arc furnaces to melt scrap steel
5 uses the existing kit in Redcar to
produce 3 million tonnes a year of steel from iron ore using
de-watered sewage sludge in place of coal and coke
and produce 2 million tonnes a year of steel from scrap
by electric arc re-melt at either Redcar or Port Talbot
Tata own Port Talbot
they want 500 million GB pounds from the UK government to
keep things as they are
politicians always seeking re-election want
big headlines: I brought or saved thousands of jobs in this town
you can't produce thousands of jobs for
bakers or painters and decorators at a stroke, in one town
and so politicians did two things to Port Talbot
they gave it a filthy stinking steel works
and they made it next to impossible to recruite
the likes of bakers and decorators in the area
this is not driven by economics
but by politics
by quick fix politicians
wanting to be loved
at this point in time
with so much scrap being available and being
exported from the UK
the UK economics says
3 million tonnes from iron ore and 3 million tonnes from scrap
all without use of fossil fuels is the
prime objective
if the UK government decides not to stump up
500 million to turn
Port Talbet into a
Welsh open Air Museum
a Welsh mega Beamish
then putting the scrap melter into Port Talbot
and making the 'from iron ore' steel in Redcar is
OK by us
and isn't it strange...
The Tories closed Redcar and
Redcar elected it's first Tory MP since
Proudfoot
when he was
believe it or not
MP for Redcar and Whitby
shows how much Redcar has grown

to return to Scunthorpe...
Scunthorpe has had 4 blst furnaces
two of them are operational
one of those after major repairs to
accident damage
each produces around
one and half - 1.5 - million tonnes a year
so Redcar's one blast is the size of the
entire Scunthorpe works
and Redcar has scope for two more similar sized furnaces
and so
all three towns were making 11 million tonnes a year
and the plan was for
Redcar to make around 10 million tonnes a year
but the politicians had other ideas
people have votes
politicians want votes
the people of The Tees Valley
choice
the choice never given to them before
Labour - continue to be called
Smoggies
Tory - loose a couple of thousand jobs
at the first presentation of this choice??
voted Tory isn't it?



Our Ricker has had a thought
a thought about
'false positives' in
prostate cancer
there is this test
the PSA test
prostate specific antigen test
first
why would you think you had prostate cancer?
this train of thought relies on the fact that we don't
have a thoroughly reliable
circuit diagram for the human nervous system
the main reason for thinking you may have
prostate cancer is a complex of
frequent urination - not to be confused with
symptoms of type 1 diabetes
where people drink and urinate a lot
increased urination at night
having difficulty starting or maintaining a
steady flow of urine
what we are talking about in false diagnoses of
prostate cancer is
often feeling the urge to urinate
and not being able to
that is the symptom we are considering here
when our Ricker was having his
anatomy viva at med school
the one question where he guessed the answer
and probably got it wrong was
what connects the kidney with the bladder
ureter or urethra?
ureters are muscle lined ducts that
propel urine from the kidney to the bladder
the urethra is
the other hole up yer chuff
the one that leads the the bladder not the womb
anyway
the renal pelvis is
the funnel shaped, dilated aprt of the ureter
in the kidney
here's the Ricker concept
suppose that you think the urge to urinate comes from
having a distended bladder
suppose that in fact
either or both
a distended bladder
and
a distended renal pelvis
trigger the urge to urinate
say in the night
your lunch or evening meal is
making its way along your gut and
there is gas or just a lot of food
and anyway
somehow
the gut contents squash the ureter
probably on the right hand side...
and you or your doctor think
your discomfort comes from
your prostate squashing your urethra
men and women both have urethras but
male plumbing is more complex
if you get
how shall we say
occasional and transient
could it be prostate cancer symptoms...
a blockage in you gut squashing your kidney tubes
will much more easily
come and go
than the swelling of
a cancerous prostate gland
summary
you want to wee because there is
back pressure in your kidney
prbably the right one - disposition of
accending colon...
lower back pain on that side
you can't wee because your bladder is empty
left kidney not working too hard in
the middle of the night
early morning sample usually
darker in colour, more concentrated, less volume
all down to
tube walls getting weak
not standing up too well to
pressure from your expanding gut



at this point we want to pick up on the
A
in PSA
this is not
prostate specific antibody
it is
prostate specific antigen
what this means is that
at any time, any man, however ill or healthy WILL have
bits of their prostate gland
breaking off and circulating in their blood
to take an analogy that may or may not be current
the water companies say
only poo and pee into the water in the loo
back in the day when our Ricker knew about these things
in public toilets - girls' toilets in school
there was a thing like a hand dryer in the toilets that
was a mini incinerator for
used sanitary products
you may say
going back to a face from the past
Germain Greer's first and most vivid complaint about
being a girl
was being forced to go into the garage
to wash out her
jam rags
away from sight of brothers and father
jam rags being re-usable sanitary wear
to expand into the real of
PSA
incinerating noxious material at home
kind of died out with the end of open coal and wood fires
Ricker's dad used to spit
phlegm - coughed up material
into the open fire
tissues of the body
get the cleaners in - regularly
those t lymphocytes go around doing
clean up
they are like the open fire or the
toilet furnace
destroying material at source
but the dust bin men also call
the blood and lymph systems and
cytoplasmic flow in nerves
carry off detritus for
destruction off site
and that process is the basis of
cancer and infection spread
in a sense because
the nasties are not
sealed up properly for transit
Ricker's long dead niece
Annelise
'got wrong' off the binnies - refuse collectors
for putting used nappies in the bin
not properly wrapped up
in vast populations we may ask
when is
organic fertilizer
better classified as
clinical waste?
is all animal excrement to be
classified as
vetenary clinical waste?
when people and animals are not ill
their waste is not a threat
but people and animals can be
should be
at all times assumed to be
potentially carrying pathogens
and so we drill little babies
not to
play with their food
and not to touch anything that
could be poo
at the same time
in certain communities
people hand mould
animal excrement into
fuel blocks and set them around the dwelling
to dry
and they live to considerable ages


this is where we have a beef with the
hand washing
we segregate menstrual waste
out of
an abundance of caution
it has been assumed down the ages that
menstrual blood is
way different from blood from a
cut finger or a head wound
and may be highly dangerous
in some communities
women who are 'on' are forced to
live in a shed outside the home for the time of one of the things we are not seeing these days are
those blokes in little vans
parked outside office blocks and pubs
swapping
full little grey bins
for empty ones
because
everybody is working from home and the pubs are shut
back in the day and the factory where Ricker worked was called
Bateman's Laboratories
everybody knew which girls were 'on'
because one all other days they would come to work in
slacks or trousers
but during their period they would turn up
in a skirt
for cleaner, easier access to the cursed matter
it is entirely in the same class of
where's the beef?
where's the evidence that menstrual blood needs
special segregation?
where's the evidence that
as one minister said
soap and water is the only thing we know
that will kill the virus
wrong on both counts
it doesn't kill the virus
and
sanitiser - alcohol
does








now here's a thing
we can see in these pictures that
the surface water drain is being divered to
make way for the new Regent cinema
what we can't see is that most of the effort in this
skightly over running project
is just less than a metre deeper
and around a metre nearer the building
is is a diversion of the
foul water connection to the
long sea outlet
that can usually be seen as it crosses the rocks
the scars in red cliff scars - Redcar
scar - bare and broken place on
side of a mountain
precipitous bank or cliff
also scaur
Old Norse - Norwegian - sker
the local cliffs
Hunt Cliff Saltburn
are of red boulder clay
red clay with large pebbles in it
and the Esplanade was a boulder clay cliff over
grey shale
the cliffs are red boulder clay
and
the rocks - scars -are
grey shale
presumably the stuff
North Sea oil and gas have been taken from
the main spread of rocks off the Regent site is
for navigation purposes called
West Scar
further out, separated by a gap called
Luff Way
the rocks are called
Salt Scar
and Coatham Grammar's building was renamed
Saltcsar Secondary
when it was used as a comp
These are Coatham Rocks
Redcar Rocks include
East Scar
and
Stokesley Scar
between East and West is
The Laid



we do not wish to dent the enthusiasm of the
government minister around the world who wish to
line the pockets of friends and family with
shares in big pharma
but
there may not be a huge variety of strains of
SARS
Corona viruses
there are a significant number of
'flu viruses
hence the annual jab
but if shareholders in big pharma are
waiting for the next CoViD
they may have a long wait if they are
depending on
mutations



Whatever may be said about the scale of
public school tuition fees...
football - not the American version
is a vary cheap sport to provide
and so with teaching
math or maths, mathematics is very cheap to teach
and great young minds are moulded by maths
and deprived of science
due to cost
and so we will today try to present biological principle in
mathematical terms

mutation + selection = adaptation

mutation + selection pressure = adaptation

no species that we could describe as a pathogen
or microbe
sets out to adapt to new conditions
utterly devoted readers of theses sites may have read that
in higher beings; mammals - including humans, and other
sex based animals
can have a process in place where
increased
stress hormones
cause increased RATES of mutation
but no organism has a CRISPR style gene editing capacity
there is no mechanism in nature to
suss out what modification would be useful
and then build t
we are not going to explain CRISPR
but we will suggest how such a system could work
there re two sorts of problem with genes
genes that and missing
genes that shouldn't be there but are
in theory
a virus sort of a thing could enter a cell and
latch onto a sequence of codons - code units, letters
that are of interest
1 material we want to remove
2 material we want to replace with a better version
it could find that match
and remove the one section and if appropriate
insert the other
there are therefore two essential stages in this therapy
1 build or find the code you want
2 remove the fault and if appropriate insert the replacement
no living thing comes
find or make the new, do the swap
light years close to being able to do that
except humans in the lab and hospital

9th November 2020

we think we should comment about the
presidency of the United States
we take a lesson from this that we doubt
the chattering classes will
they upset two groups within the
groundling layer of society
they said
how appalling
Trump said
women like you to feel them up
this upset women who like a bloke to feel them up
and it upset men who do it in all fondness
it set up a feeling that
Trump was a bulwark against all the
people in power
who will - in their eyes
select at random a commonplace action in daily life
and turn it into a heinous crime
they make the suggestion about
one Enemy of The People
but millions get caught up in the cross fire
and
the lack of
Statutes of Limitation
gee thanks Mrs Ming
it is now a commonplace to apply
current fashions in polite behaviour
to ancient actions
and
so many people living for so long
without statutes of limitation
eventually
everybody over 60
should just check into jail on their birthday
save the courts the trouble

2nd November 2020

Redcar now has a
Remembrance muriel
Coronation Street reference
Hilda Ogden had a murial - mural
On her living room wall
regarding Redcar as such
there is a consultation right now
that is for a couple of days
that said it is probably not
a fishing exercise but a legal requirement
for some fairly solid plan
four buildings seem to be in the frame
according to the literature
Tuned-In
the part of Uptons department store that isn't
now a part of >BR> The Livery
The former Marks and Spencer
and perhaps
the map is very fuzzy
Redcar Job Centre
we will eventually put up the photos
Tuned-In was built as a
homework venue for kids who couldn't get
peace and quite at home in the eveneings
now the plan has it and
either the Job Centre
or Morrisons car park
linked under
reinvigourating Tuned-In!
in essence
not a refuge from family life but
bring them along too
The Uptons site - presently between the rather under threat TSB
and the Livery
just next to Wilkinsons
That is under
Library+ community and cultural hub
Marks and Spencer
and possibly Woolworths too
Now empty and Goodwins respectively
is under
New Public Space
a new events space linking Regent Walk with
The Esplanade
These properties are not signed as
For Sale or To Let
so perhaps the council has bought them
and the budget for re-development is
up to 25 million quid

TunedIn

Uptons. New Library site?

Redcar Job Centre

Redcar Marks and Spencer

Redcar British Steel station is just beyond this bridge

and the TransPennine Express passe through and beside the cleared site




we catch odd little snippets of information
we recently heard the BBC's Cambridge virologist say
something along the lines that
there are 30,000
thirty thousand
codons or letters in the genetic code or sequence of
the 2019 corona virus
and he also said that in the 9 months or so that
samples from patients have been sequenced - routinely
two or three of those letters have changed
referring back to our quotation of the
Hardy-Weinstein principle
there has not been much genetic change
and so we conclude that there has not been much
selective pressure
on the virus
this is really really really important
it has to be understood that if people are
developing immunity to a virus
that will represent a selective pressure on the virus
in precise terms
we get a different 'flu vaccine each year
because
immunty to one strain
is of little or no help with another
our Naked Scientist - podcast name reference
says no significant change over at least 9 months
this means
no selective pressure
as a back calculation
and therefore
any advance in dealing with the virus has not been
with the development of immunity
which would have lead to disproportionate
human attacks on the predominant strain
and the flourishing of a significant variant
SARS 2020 would have taken over from SARS 2019
since we are still dealing with SARS 2019
ALL OF THE PROGRESS WE HAVE MADE HAS BEEN WITH
SUPPRESSION OF TRANSMISSIONS
no herd immunity whatsoever



we find ourselves in need of an extra term
we are needing to know what to call those people who are
not quite in the chattering classes
more the chuntering classes
the curtain twitchers
we would say at this time that the most prominent of these is
ex-Prime Minister Theresa May
but some of the most trenchant are Labour
the reason these people
shall we settle for the chuntering classes
are determined to channel help
away from children towards mothers is that
they are in the phrase
happy to let the kids
hang as they grow
rather like
education being akin to those clear glass tubes
people used to use to make sure their
cucumbers grew straight
they want
all these people
judges, lawyers, politicians
who shovel money at women
are doing so to distract them from
sex work
these people want to see their streets
clear of human detritus
but the sight of a
male beggar
gives them a sense of superiority
the sight of an importuning female
makes them feel
insecure
and women who have not had children will we suppose
always be wondering
what is the difference between me and a
Stepford Wife
Stepford Wives is a movie about a suburb in which
the men come home to
a lawn mower and a robot wife
young uns should
gen up on
Za Za Gabor
Quote
husbands are like fires
she means
the old log burner type
they go out when
unattended

there is this theory that
for most of the month
women would prefer to
house share with a gay guy
because he would be good around the house
good fo more than taking out the trash
but for one week of so she craves more excitement
there have been tales of women with young children
dying young from the likes of cancer and
wanting in on the choice of their
kids' new step mom
there has been less publicity for women who know they will be
too tired for sex after the baby arrives
who
want to be the person who hires their partner's
temporary entertainer
we think that women who oppose sex working fall into two camps
the ones with no excuse for
not paying attention to their partners
and the ones with
cultural hang ups
we have no data on
how many school teachers are moms and
how many are not
what we do know is that in history
both nurses and school marms were
nuns
and by definition not
actively part of a family home
and this is to be taken into account when
consulting
'the professionals' over what and when
children should be taught
we suspect that as
mums are becoming more present in the workforce
the workforce is seeing children
less as an also-people subspecies
and more as
adults in development
it is quite startling to the unfamiliar
just how
opinionated
a two year old can be
especially a two year old female
and so the old Jesuit saying
give me the child up to the age of four
and I will give you the adult
has a firm basis in truth
and so an education system
and a set of internet regulations that
insist that
children will never grow up
sets up a whole raft of problems
they concept of
upward mobility
is promoted in a context of if ignorance is bliss
'tis folly to be wise
and
oh, don't bother your pretty little head
with things like that
time was - not so long ago
a child could be
taken into care if their school found out
they knew about sex
now the parents can blame the internet
we like the story about little children and
filling in the blanks
a child in need of an expletive
bursts out with
corsets
because it was the most unmentionable word
they had so far come across
most people would say
knickers in that situation but if the parents had
always referred to panties and transmitted no
sense of shame in doing so
knickers would not
furnish the service of an expletive for that child

26th October 2020

We guess this is for
the editor of the EG
rather than the mayor of Middlesbrough
you gotta demolish that SHED
if you wanna build that extension

Endeavour is futile
without a tragic
back story
you haven't got a hope in hell

another
human interest story
that's what you are
that's what you
need to be

19th October 2020

giving them a decent education
from cities as large as Manchester or
Newcastle upon Tyne
could be taught in just one school
seems the basis of their relative decline
one thing we can say is that there were many types of
grammar school
boys', girls', co-ed
grammar technical schools
our Ricker attended a
boys' grammar technical school
in the then small town of Redcar
girls in the area could attend the
Girls' Grammar
Cleveland Grammar
That was not a grammar technical school
that was in a context where there were three tiers of
state secondary school
grammar, technical, modern
we have no actual experence of
Secondary Modern school education but
we suspect that the 'modern' bit
consisted of adding
typing
to the traditional
Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic
the three Rs so beloved of
Cabinet Office Minister Gove
Mr Gove of
'we have had enough of experts'
to distinguish
technical from modern
Redcar's grammar technical school had
workshops with
band saws, drill presses, planer thicknesers
capstain lathes
blacksmithing furnaces
a technical drawing office
that stuff would have been sold off when
Coatham grammar technical school was
replaced by
Saltscar Comprehensive
although it may have gathered dust until
the building
the most expensive ever put up by
North Riding County Council
was demolshed to make way for
a centre for excluded pupils
under construction in 2020
we have no confidence whatsoever that
eductional buildings erected by the state
will be for long used for the purpose
advetised in the planning application
as an aside
we can report that when
The Coatham Grammar building was put up
so much was the concern over it being built
on a marsh
that its several wings were
linked with
rubber gaskets
in case there was differential settlement
and then when the site was re-developed fo the
Mo Mowlam refuge for the slightly deranged
instead of building the land up
with hard core
they dug down into the mud
and in an even more distant reference we cn say that
storms revealed a
drowned forest
on Coatham - Redcar beach
some of the peat from that was been dug up during the
construction of the new drain
on the Regent Cinema site
we are ay a strange juncture in UK politics
the Tory party are presently
the party of no loosers
and the Labour party is
the party of entitlement
in that sense
for the time being at least
all UK politicians are
left of centre
the whole of Brtish politics has become somewhat like
The National Trust
saddled with a load of castles and ramparts to
protect against those post Second World War
enemies
ignorance, want, stravation
and
foreve chanting
hat's that coming over the hill
is it a monster?
a perfect example of this was the rather nice woman
who was appointed
children's commissioner for England
and immediately went abroad - Middle East
looking for the starving childen she couldn't find in the UK
to refer back to an earlier comment
having re-organised logistics to create opportunites for
droves of steering wheel attendants
we now have
trucks driven by East Europeans
and vans driven by
grandads
every initiative drempt up by
the plutocrats of oxford University
seems to end up being
a solution
in search of a problem
plutocracy - government by the wealthy
each of them
having got bored with being wealthy
gets into
tell yer mother I save ya
mode wanting to
go down in history
as having saved the nation or the world from
something or other
and that is not a lot different from
for example
the authorites in North Korea
maintaining their grip on the populace by
keeping them in ignorance
just sufficent education to perform
and feeding them stories about
imminent invasion threats
and so
problems that require
teamwork and public co-operation
get shoved to the side in favour of
'problems' that can be
solved at a stroke
by
The Dear Leader



sometimes we have a little chuckle to ourselves about
home spun medical advice
from the Dutch
donderbus
thunderbox
we have a trumpet shaped firearm called a
blunderbus
Paddy Hodsman
used to point out a bus on his travels with Tommy Robson
the blunder bus
taking the single mums to the orphanage to give birth
that is by the bye
we just thought we would record that whilst we had the laptop fired up
the object today s to set a question for the people who fall between
Only Connect
and Unitersity Challenge
in the US College Bowl

What is the link between
cancer
and
oxford Ragwort
?

the hint is
margins
pwoplw get confused about different classes of things that
can do you harm
our Ricker is always a bit careful about
eating anything that has gone mouldy
he likes cheese
cheese is mouldy milk
here's the thing about mouldy food
the contrast between
mouldy food and food with a bacterial contamination
over the years a lot of people have died from eating grain
flour based foods
prepared from gain that had been contaminated with we cook food to make it easier to bite and chew
and to improve the taste
we also cook food - and check temperatures reached
to kill bacteria
for the most part
kill the bacteria - the food will be safe to eat
we will be safe from infection
eat something contaminated with the wrong kind of fungus
made from the wrong sort of mushroom....
three sort sof mushroom
tasty, magic, lethal
all effects not of the mushroom itself
potentially INFECTING you
but the toxins it secretes and spread out through what it is growing on
kill the fungus, you don't destroy the toxin
not necessarily
the one does not automatically follow from the other
this needs saying but the point here is that
cancer is not an infection
it is not usually secreting a toxin
not like
botulism secreting
clostrdium botulinum
botulina toxin
here's the thing
if you give a patient the toxin that
for the sake of arguement is
the toxin produced by
botulinum
called
botox
or myobloc Jeauvea others
say you gave it as an
antibiotic
rather than to kill nerve cells so your
muscles couldn't concertena your wrinkles
absolutely, fundamentally
if you are in a dirty filthy place such as a hospital...
you may pick up C diff
and your body's previous encounter - real or simulated with
C botulina
may
compromise your efforts against C diff
in this context
the antibiotic IS NOT, NOT, Not
causing the Clostridium to
MUTATE
it is compromising your ability to
fight C diff
bacteria and fungi secrete toxins to
suppress competitor bacteria and fungi
viruses do not do this
viruses are way too simple
viruses produce one thing
viruses
and they can't do that without hijacking a living cell
Oxford ragwort
this Scenecio was introduced into Britain via
Francisco upani and William gerard in the
years of their visit
1700, 1701, 1702
from Sicily
where it lives as a native on
volcanc ash
they planted some in the
Duchess of Baufort's garden in
Badminton
later jacob Bobart the Younger
took some to the
Oxford Botanic Garden
where he was
Horti Praefectus head gardener
it found the stonework of the
Dreaming Spires
including the
Bodleian Library
made it feel right at home
by 1800 it had the official name
Senecio squalidus
from being endemic to the volcanoes of Sicily
it transitioned to become
endemic to those slopes
and the also to Oxford walls
endemic meaning
restricted to, not found anywhere else
and then came the
Industrial Revolution
and for some strange reason
ocford was connected to the
Railway network
this had two effects
thye seeds of Oxford ragwaort were carried along the tracks
by the slipstream, vorticies, eddies of airste up by
trains
the second factor was
the tracks of the railway were set on rocky balast
and that we strewn with cinders and ashes
even more like the old country and its volcanoes
than soppy honey coloured stone walls is Oxford
and now
Oxford ragwort can be found anywhere in the UK where
there have been railways
cancer cells DO NOT
INFECT
neighbouring cells
just as ragwort cannot transform
nearby rose into ragwort
cancer cells ar cells that have entered an
inappropriate stage of development
or mode of action
most likely becaue a gene or number of genes that
should have been or were
switched off
were inappropriately
switched back on again
or the converse
this is why
if you have - for instance
breast cancer
'that has spread'
it will be the
lymph glands in your arm pit
and not other structures nearer to the breast that
may well be removed
however, further to other comments about the role of
bone marrow in immunology
bladder cancer spreads to - bone liver lung
breast cancer spreads to bone, brain, liver ling
colon cancer spreads to liver lung
kidney cancer spreads to bone liver lung
secondaries or daughter colonies of
mode dysfunctional cells set up where the
blood circulation
and
lymphatic drainage
carry them
each cancer cell is in a world of its own
transported into a
second childhood
where it just grows and divides
to produce a meaningless blob or mass of tissue that
usually squashes surrounding structures
but may secrete harmful hormones are similar chemicals
the cancer cell has lost its sense of its role in the
organisation, structure and function of
the body as a whole
like an ambulance chasing lawyer
and so we should end with a quote
somebody first said it but we forget who
an honest politician is a person who
when bought
stays bought
Sometimes we want to publish a picture of something that is
very big
and things to do with trains are often
long and thin
to give you a chance to explore today's thing
we have set the picture
side on
most mobile 'phones will have a fit if you try to see something side on so
good luck with that
we said earlier that contractors were installin drainage on the far boundary of Coatham Marsh
even earlier we said that the nature of the
keep out signs indicate
high voltage electrical installations
if you can see the little white towers...
these are to stop te drains overflowing
if they back up
There's a Whitby mineral train in the shot of you can find it this is a track bed for a set of
sidings intended for fuelling trains with hydrogen
The white streak to the right is the road bridge at
Redcar British Steel railway station
the black building is
Steel House - visible from Trunk Road - other side
the second picture...
at the bottom you my just be able to see the
new fence that
fences the
Hydrogen site
from the
steelworks

12th October 2020

People in general think of
Mercedes
as a car and van manufacturer
from the earliest days
Mercedes was a name
the name of a company chief's daughter
a name given to a brand of vehicles made and sold by
Daimler
Daimler was at the start British but soon became German
Daimler is probably bigger than BMW
BMW is a German family business making cars and such
The Ford family own around 2 per cent of shares in Ford
the thing is
the shares the family own are
voting shares
all the rest carry no authority but
bear risk and dividend dependent on how the family run the company
The company still owe billions to the US government
after a bail out during the 2008 crash
although they have paid back three quarters of what they borrowd
when we talk of
Mercedes
in the context of Formula 1 motor racing
we mean
Mercedes AMG Petronas
at points along the way
two companies grew up
as dominant amongst those
doing up-grades on Mercedes cars
AMG
and
Brabus
in broad terms
Mercedes bought all of AMG
and half of Brabus
in essence Mercedes have to irons in the fire of
performance upgrades
Petronas is owned by what they call a
sovereign wealth fund
it is owned by a government
probably the government of Malaysia
Petronas is shall we say ten times the size of Mercedes
and they 'own' through sponsorship
Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 racing
Petronas do not own Brabus
Petronas are into many things
property - the Petronas Towers
but mainly
oil,gas and shipping
Red Bull sell sodas
Red Bull do not make sodas
they licence other companies to make
Red Bull
Red Bull
sell Red Bull
and they spend a third of the money they make on
Red Bull Racing
a couple of F1 teams
and that spend amounts to
thirty million dollars a year
and half of that has been going to Honda for engines
The point is
Mercedes AMG - owned by a government and in the fossil fuel trade
will not be making fossil fuel free engines for anybody
would Daimler through Brabus
make a hydrogen fuelled internal combustion engine for
Red Bull?
essentially Red Bull have
let out a tender
they re offering 20 million pounds sterling GBP
Great British Pounds
per year
to supply four F1 cars with
hydrogen powered internal combustion engines
Fiat through Ferrari?
Daimler through Brabus?
not Honda it seems
Renault?
if Renault Nissan Mitsubishi
are thinking past batteries
and let us say
the hydrogen will be being produced in Redcar
and Nissan is near Sunlessland
Sunderland
and the UK government are handing out cash to companies willing to
develop new uses for hydrogen if they are
base in the Tees valley
It is rather looking like Renalt engines for Red Bull
even if that means a change of
senior staff
at Renault
incidentally
between them
Renault and Nissan
Own three per cent of
Daimler
it is an important dimension of
protecting our credibility
that
We have to drip feed information
to some extent
we have - if you check - mentioned
cast iron gas mains being replaced with
plastics ones
to be more resistant to water content
increasing water content
we now have
British Gas Networks
selecting Cumbria
the county of the
Lake District
of north west England
selecting Cumbria for a trial of
increasing the amount of
hydrogen
in mains gas
you may have noticed that we are amongst the few who refer to
Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi
as such
Renault make their
Nissan Leaf battery car in
Washington, Tyne and Wear
near to Sunderland
a few years ago they hived off their
battery making division
if you make electric cars and you stop making
batteries...
you are thinking of switching
from batteries to fuel cells
Now Honda have given 18 months notice of bringing and end to
making engines for
Formula 1 motor racing
Formula 1 has pioneered
hybrid motive power technology
as it stands the plan as published is
ramp up hydrogen for Cumbria cutomers
and if all is well
run around as some people may remember from the 1970s
run around and swap the
burner nipples in all the customer appliances
as in the switch from coal or town gas to
natural gas
and fit - for free - new burner nipples to burn
pure hydrogen
if it works in Cumbria they will roll it out across the UK
we've set a couple of hares running there
and here is another
if you can really easily modify a
domestic water heating boiler to run central heating
you can adapt an internal combustion engine to run on
hydrogen
you don't HAVE TO have a fuel cell stack to
run a vehicle on hydrogen
we listen to people quite carefully
we think there is in F1 terms
pressure from
Red Bull
for regulation changes that would allow them to
build their own
hydrogen powered internal combustion engine for F1
whilst Honda concentrate on fuel cells
the project has been priced at
200 million GBP Great British Pounds
can the Red Bull owner afford that
probably
you don't have that close a grip on the numbers
if your planning isn't really well advanced
a hydrogen powered internal combustion engine in F1
in the 2022 season
that's the concept



A little while ago we had something to say about
if a female does not show signs of puberty by
age 13 and or is not menstruating at least
nine times a year by age 16
something is wrong and tests are in order
we respond to news stories in the question of
when it is right to raise certain issues
and so we are presently driven to the other end of the scale
in the past we have told the tale of
little boy Ricker who was so excited about
going on holiday...
that when his mam insisted he have a wee before they set off
he had to explain that he couldn't
because 'it' had gone hard and despite needing a wee
he couldn't
get it out
and this refers to the fact that
males get
piss proud
and females don't
a male can get an erection that is more pronounced
if his bladder presses on the veins draining his penis
and this can be expected from the age of puberty and
nothing is amiss if puberty happens
in females by the age of 8
and in males by the age of 9
when you have
ambulance chasing lawyers getting BBC screen time
to speak of
females of age 19 not 9 being
too young to be skewered by a prince...
you are not surprised if
the Quackery of the Land of the Free
want to dose all under twenties with
puberty inhibitors
drugs that suppress the production of
puberty causing hormones
infantilising a young person for
personal
but not sexual
gratification
is
child abuse
and so the question is
is there social harm as well as personal abuse
if parents delay the sexual maturity of their offspring
to a time of the parents' choosing?
this whole matter is reflective of
foot binding in Ancient China
and not exactly
chemical castration
but
chemical FGM
genital mutilation
even if temporary
it has a smack of
I'm up, pull the ladder up
WE are the adults and they are the children
and it's gonna stay that way

5th October 2020

Who is
Sir Tufty Cutts? sorry...
Our Ricker can't tell whether his brain is going
or standards of
diction
enunciation
on the TV
are slipping
anyway
not Sr Tufty Cutts
certificates
Our Rickers got lots
two of the are certificates from
Durham University
for
Distinctions in
Database
Spreadsheet
we have had a data loss in
Public Health England
recently
There are two fundamentally different ways of
storing and retrieving data in computers
one of the problems with this site is that it does use
tables
very badly
tables are a variety of arrays
data can be stored in computers in
either
arrays
or
linked lists
if you have
750 pupils in a school
you can set up a database that is defined as having
enough cells to contain
750 individual data sets
on the other hand
you can set up a computer to accept data as it comes and
end the entry with a pointer to the locaton in memory where
the next data set can be found
in other words
when you don't know how many people will apply for a CoViD test
you could set up an array or table with space for
60 million people
or you could use a linked lists protocol that can cope with
any number of data sets
we presume that several government departments have
universal data arrays
Inland Revenue, your National Insurance Number
your NHS number which incidentally
is in no way related to your NI number and
if you are a patient at a major hospital
you will have a patient number that is in no way related to
your NHS number
an NHS number is 10 digits a James Cook number will be a letter followed by 6 digits
when these web sites were registered
the registration HAD to BE made via
fax
not 'phone call, not letter, not email
fax
people don't expect to have to
re-train if they have not lost their appointment
so they use
legacy technologies



we have photos of the latest visit of
Cnute Construction
to Redcar
but they are not exciting enough for us to bother to upload them
got a bunch of thickoes? get them to fill plastic bags with sand off the beach
and stack them around the Regent
including across the exit of the land drain you are contracted to move
come back after a lively night and find
Old North Sea has half emptied all your sandbags
if you got a handfull of
Hi-Vis old farts and a digger
why bother with the
plans









we think
we think this may be a pictue of a tree
if it is a picture of a tree...
it's a weather picture
somewhere around here there is a piture of a tree at
Redcar Tesco
that has had the leaves on its northern half
stripped off by a north wind
leaving the leaves on the southern half
still in place
just wanted to explain how that got there
if it did









Our Ricker has been doing a bit more gardening this year
and these pictures illustrate
just how long it is since
he was last able to
do much in the garden



The fossil boys have got lots and lots of money
they can afford to give lots of it to
the likes of Satchi and Sarchi
Public Relations people
to spread
disinformation
nobody gives us any money to correct
the
Group Think
they generate
The cheap and cheerful repost....
Somebody has convinced the UN
the United Nations
who have told the BBC
that
18 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions
come from agriculture
and that 20 per cent come from transport
let us turn the ideas under that upside down
from the point of view of your own home life...
setting aside the economics of running the home
take the life of a person in their early teens
for themselves they have two things to consider
what they eat
and
what they wear
they eat and drink food and drink
they part company permanently with the waste that produces
they buy, are given, clothes
they wear the clothes and after they have been worn
they
set them aside in their wardrobe, throw them over a chair
stick them in the laundry for mum to wash
take them to the charity shop
throw them in the rubbish
choices
whatever
food and drink and a straight through deal
unless you follow Howard Hughes
clothes have a re-cycling element
essentially
you can add and remove clothes to and from your
wardrobe
at will
some used clothes are turned into
wool based wall insulation but that is a side issue
agriculture is like the clothing industry
like the fossil carbon elements are
diesel fuel for farm machinery and food distribution
and fossil fuel inputs into
fertilizer and agri-chemical inputs
these are not
ANYTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH
carbon going into and coming out of
farm animals
farmers take carbon dioxide out of the wardrobe
the air, the atmosphere
and feed it to plants
the animals - or people - eat the plants
and the carbon dioxide is returned to the wardrobe
either directly through burps and bottom burps
or after the microbes 'out there' have
digested the poo
the question is not
how often do we visit the wardrobe?
the question is
how often do we hit the shops?
there is no net impact on global warming from
the essential processes of agriculture
the single most important question in
the economics of agriculture is
plants fix carbon dioxide
you gotta do that to be regarded as a plant
fix in the sense of taking it out of the atmosphere
and turning it into something solid
such as sugars and cellulose and lignin
a small proportion of plants
do the same thing with nitrogen
in a
crop rotation
one year in four - usually
a farmer grows a crop that fixes nitrogen
in the way that all plants fix carbon dioxide
we will not check this but
the Ricker mind thinks of
clover and beans
it is actually nodules on the roots of suitable
host plants that contain the
nitrogen fixing bacteria
just as in 'all plants'
it is the chloroplasts that live in the leaves
that fix the carbon dioxide
we can mine for all the nutrients plants and ourselves need
except nitrogen
recycling the fixed nitrogen
before it is released back as a
gas in the atmosphere by
unhelpful micro-organisms
is
the essence of
orgasmic farming
that is
organic with a PR spin
if you are vegetarian...
to be organic
you need to spread
human waste on farmers' fields
if you eat meat
it is animal waste that has to be spread
human waste pong something awful
and so we run it through
the Northumbria Water
Bran Sands
sewage dewatering plant
to remove the pong and probably kill any
pathogens
before it is spread on the fields as pellets
In theory
you need a special licence to sell and use
polyhalite fertilizer
such as is dug up at Boulby
and will be dug up in the new mine
a licence to use this
fertilizer that has no nitrogen in it
unless you mix it with a source of
fixed nitrogen
that is why the Billingham plant - factory - was
originally called
CCF
Concentrated Compounded Fertilizer
Nirtam mixed with salt
nitrogen, phosphorous, potash,
NPK
yer gardening gurus will tell you
an unbalanced fertiliser gives you
all leaves and no flowers
people are made of
CHONPS
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous sulphur
and all those other things
well perhaps for a start it should be
CCHONPS
because we would be
jelly fish without
calcium
the other things are mineral too
magnesium, zinc
this is why if we are cremated
we turn into a puff of smoke and a pile of ash
we are made from
fixed air - oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide
dissolved rocks
minerals
and that whole thing of
water
hydrogen compounded with oxygen
Ricker remembers a snort of derision from a
University of Teesside Business Studies lecturer when he said
well, the brain is mainly
fat and salty water
but it is
things stick in your mind
when Ricker was at school
there were educational films
no computers
you live your life up to a point and then you may have
a moment, an epiphany
Ricker had grown up with the idea that
Diamonds are For Ever
then he saw this educational movie where
a diamond was heated in a gas flame and
dropped into a flask of
liquid oxygen
nd it scuttered around the glass and
fizzled away to nothing
it had been turned into carbon dioxide
by appropriate conditions



When Ricker was at school his head teacher was a reader of
The Times Education Supplement
ever now and again he would announce something about that he had read there
Jarvis won a photography competition
from time to time he would announce that somebody had been
granted an exhibition by Oxford or Cambridge
in essence a student studies for three to five years
The theory is that if a student does
really really well in any year
they would get money to support them in the following year
if they did well in that year
the following year they could get a scholarship
this means that this is a double whammy
signification that they are doing well
and money
Durham do things differently
if they have a student short of cash
they are up for a
bursary
cash because they are broke, end of



Things change
little things pass us by
something that we heard tell of was a system of
some sort of quiet - on the quiet
negative income tax
we are not tax accountants but over time there have been various
tax allowances
as a teenager Ricker's Uncle Wilf showed Ricker a copy of
ICI's annual accounts - late 1960s
impossible to remember whether the chap mentioned was
The chairman or the chief exec
at the time
his 'compensation' was listed as
salery subject to income tax - £2,000 per year
expenses not subject to income tax - £20,000 per year
one of the features of the pre-Johnson Tory government was
introducing a payment - a few hundred pounds
to couples who married
it is interesting to consider
in terms of income taz these days
does a wife claim an extra allowance because
she has a husband
or
does a husband claim an allowance because he has a wife
apparently they can choose
if the wife is paying 'supertax' the 40? per cent on the
top part of high earnings
and her husband isn't
for tax purposes, the wife is 'head of household'
to claim against 40 per cent instead of normal 20 per cent
some people think the tax system is designed to generate income
for the government
some people think the tax system is designed to
mould human behaviour
and so we are not surprised that it is suggested that for a time
people paying higher level income tax
were made tax allowances for their children
at a higher rate than people who paid nothing but standard rate
as we heard it
there was a major tax advantage in having
4 rather than 2 children if you were a higher rate tax payer
and so, at some point, a child may be one of four
and become too old to qualify for their parent's tax relief
and be at university
and so...
is a student in need or an exhibition or scholarship
or a bursary
a student from a deprived area - background
or a student from a family with four or five kids where
the collective
college fund
has died up
because daddy and mummy can no longer claim for the
entire brood
on expenses

we just want ot add a note about local government finances
chief executives in local authorities are paid
vast sums
the roles are therefore keenly competed for
and so only people who know the ways of the world get such jobs
it is not surprising then that
local authorities
Up North
want to take over control of CoViD testing
If they do you will se numbers sky rocket
because/
the more 'cases' they can register
the more funds they can claim for from
central government
and do you think that
if local authorities hired
test and trace officers
they would
EVER
make them redundant?
see there's balance
left and right wing rip offs in two paragraphs

28th September 2020

Left Luggage Removal
The sculpture
Left Luggage
was left by the production company Atonement
and now it is being moved on to
make way for a new
Cinema Complex
Some people have asked
related to
Jonathan Swift?
people have traced Taylor Swift's family back
eleven generations but not found a Jonathan
Jonathan Swift was born in the 17th century
Jonathan Swift was Irish in a time when being Irish was
to be British
we may say things about his genetics
but what we know is that he attended
Oxford University
Hertford College
but then he attended Trinity College, Dublin
we could - at this time - refer to his
Modest Proposal
but he is more famous for writing
Gulliver's Travels
it is well known - even today
Although Swift locates the four destinations in
is that on
different continents
we think he may have been thinking nearer to home
Most people remember
Liliput
the world where people are very small
six inches tall - 15 cm
Some remember
Brobdingnag
where the people are
the people are
72 feet tall
there is less consideration given to
The flying island of Lapuna
or Balnibarbi
the land ruled from the island
The 4th land is not really named
it is just an island where
the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos live
we are doing the
Eng. Lit. essay here
We are putting forwards is our normal
pithy way
the proposal
for you to analyse and discuss...
Lilliput is Swift's version of London
Brobdingnag although set as
the united States of America
is also perhaps
Oxford
Laputa would serve as
The British Empire
and also as
Cambridge University
Blind Science with not humanity
to contrast with Oxford's
Faith not Facts
humanity and compassion
and the final land
the land of Yahoos
The land where the Houyhnhnms or
horses come from
Ireland
and to that end...
we will not type out the full title
it begins
A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children
of the poor from being a burthen sic
to their parents or country
It is essentially as a satire...
putting up the proposal that since the poor of Ireland
are much better at producing children
than at producing food crops
they should eat their children
This is one of those absolute
eco-disaster
stories
1729 A modest Proposal
1845 to 1859 Irish Potato Famine
1584 potatoes planted in
Youghall near Cork, Ireland
Ireland is
wet
it is so wet that it mainly grows
grass raise cattle for dairy as opposed to beef
so along come the potatoes
and they get planted instead of the grass and
you cut the cattle out of the loop
and so you can feed lots and lots of people
without having to have lots and lots of cattle
except that
grass belongs in Ireland
and potatoes
don't
you need a somewhat drier climate than Ireland
say, Lincolnshire or Holland
in Ireland
potatoes get
blight
they rot
and rotten potatoes don't make
cheese
1560 population of Ireland 1.4 million
1718 population of Ireland 2,9 million
1841 population of Ireland 8.13 million
1851 population of Ireland 6,55 million
1861 population of Ireland 5,8 million
2016 population of Ireland 6.66 million
These are All Ireland Numbers
Island of Ireland
It has taken from the Irish Famine in 1851 to
2016 to get the population back to post famine levels
never mind pre-famine levels
That Roman Catholic anti-contraception message is
finally getting through?
Breed and the Brits will feed you
as at present
Ireland is
90 percent self sufficient in food
over the 40 years that the UK has been
In Europe
world transportation methods have improved
fifty years ago most lamb eaten in the UK was
frozen New Zealand Lamb
Europe had
Wine Lakes
and Butter Mountains
surplus food in storage
separating the UK from its Empire
and the resultant Commonwealth
was a major plank of European policy in
reducing European overproduction of food
well - oversupply
if Britain stopped importing food from the Commonwealth
and Australia started exporting food to China
farm incomes in Europe could go up
without
setaside including British farmers
to set a proportion of their land aside
leave it
fallow
to counter oversupply
Set-Aside was an incentive scheme introduced by
The European Economic Community in 1988
to help reduce the large and costly surpluses
produced in Europe under the
guaranteed price system of
the Common Agriculture Policy CAP
it became compulsory in 1992
originally set at 15 per cent of land
land that could be farmed but wasn't
it reduced to zero by 2007
a word here about
tariffs
import tariffs are paid by the importer to
the government of the country
INTO which the goods are being imported
in simple terms
you may pay 20 per cent VAT on a thing
because you have bought it
you may pay another 20 percent on that thing
if it is imported
the numbers may vary
you could pay zero VAT on home grown
essential foods
20 per cent VAT on luxury foods
and 40 percent VAT and Tariff
on imported luxury food
you could pay
20 per cent VAT on a second hand car
you could pay 60 percent on a new imported car
20 per cent VAT because you bought it
20 Per cent CAR TAX because it's new
20 per cent import duty because it's imported
not all number need be 20 per cent
but ALL those taxes go to your own
national government and
the base price on which they are calculated may be
discounted by the government where the cars were made
by way of an
Export Subsidy
incentive payment
so that the pre-tax price in the importing country
may be lower than the pre-tax price of the same tem
in the exporting country
thus the government of the exporting country are
paying the government of the importing country to
take their goods
The present BrExit 'negotiations are about
European manufacturing countries
Germany, France, Italy
wanting to retain control over
the level of Export Subsidy the UK government can pay
to companies which export to Europe
importers in Europe are not
altogether against
UK Export Subsidies






we have extremely limited resources and
particularly in these troubled times
we have concentrated them on content
we have not taken the trouble to set up
user tracking for any site other than
redcar.biz
as we have said
other sites with the same content are
easier to use on a mobile 'phone
we may well - in context of our overall traffic
assume from the little information we have that
people have switched to
Teesvalley and our street
we can only say that
Redcar dot biz had 1,109 unique visitors
that's visitors not visits
in January 2020
1,046 in February
and 219 in August
transparency that is all
we could say that the information has
an R number
we don't have re-tweets and such
but in the old terms
people are free to
mirror
this information even though it is
copyright



It is a fact not often considered that
'Great Cities' in general, are located near to
where great rivers meet the ocean
London is a 'Great City' and
Glasgow was for some time regarded as
'The Second City of Empire'
It has been relatively recently that
London has survived despite the
'Port of Thames'
moving to Tilbury
and a little longer since most ships could get
no closer to Glasgow than
Grenock - spelled, spelt, Greenock
We have made mention of
the Manchester Ship Canal
being the means by which
Manchester competed with Liverpool
What, then, is the explanation for
Birmingham?
Brum
The explanation is only partly geographical
Birmingham is located slightly centrally in England
Birmingham exploited the development of
canals to compensate for its lack of a major river
all of this worked until the coming of the
railways when Birmingham's lack of a river
became even less important
Birming ham was then sitting pretty with a choice of
Sea Ports located at the local railway goods yard
all in the realms of
compensation and mitigation
not cause
What is the cause and function of
Oxford?
Oxford is and was a place
in the countryside where
The Chattering classes of London could
escape
The Great Stink
a safe place away from
pestilence and plague
If we now consider the contrast between
Great Cities of Europe
and
Great Cities of The World...
what is the major difference?
What one factor distinguishes
Birmingham from
London, Antwerp, Saint Petersburg?
There is something that Birmingham is
NOT
it is not a
Guild City
once a year
we completely forget at what time of year
probably late spring, Boat Race time
the BBC slip in a couple of hours of
Saturday morning TV that gets little publicity
it is coverage of
The Lord Mayor's Show
and the floats are not
Notting Hill Carnival
Samba Band
derived
they represent the
Trade Guilds of The City of London
As with the
Union of Sooth Sayers and Mystics
in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
demanding
Clearly Defined areas of Doubt and Uncertainty
through to
Trades Unions in the second half of the 20th Century
and their
Demarcation Disputes
In London you could not work at a trade unless
you were a member of the appropriate
Trade Guild
In Birmingham
You had the goods, you could sell them
and all the while
gradually
local authorities under pressure to establish and run
Trading Standards Departments
to in a sense
Test Goods
in some unremarked contrast to
Universities and Technical Colleges
set up to test workers
That is a fairly significant conflict in world affairs
The quintessential Guild University of London is
City University
Gresham College
Sir John Cass Business School
Their ethos is
take on as students people who have already got
through family ties and networking
nailed on job prospects
and train them to be consistent in their work with
the approprate Guild
In the sense that their full time courses evolved from
day release and night school for
ambitious employees
'Real Appretices'
This is not practicable for the new
street corner universities
they know that most of their graduates'
First Destination on Graduation
will be
the Hospitality Industry
Soda Jerks
berger flpper
you can't spend three years
training somebody how to use a
beer pump and a contactless till

21st September 2020

There is a vague distinction between
a constricted site
and
a non-constricted site
Interserve are building a refuge for refusenics
The Mo Mowlam Centre for
excluded pupils
on Corporation Road and
it is a huge site
and they are putting up a couple of phases of
single storey prefabs that take up around
15 to 20 per cent of the site
they have chosen to go
clarts plodging
as Our Friends in the North
would have it
mud on the road
contractors and deliverers told
park on the pavement
workers parking in the
Technical College car park opposite
somehow overcoming the extensive provision to keep
local residents out of the car park when the college is closed
and then there are the contractors
demolishing the old Pavilion Theatre, Regent Cinema Coatham Pier
on a restricted site
with a clearly defined work site that is very much
restricted for size
we shall see whether they continue as the have begun
and
live up to
The Considerate Constructors code
and don't join Interserve in the
Clarts Plodging League
what is so particularly upsetting about The Mo Mowlam Contract is
that throughout
Tarmac have delivered and laid wagon after wagon of
blacktop to site
and the site manager has refused to make
workers and visitors
USE THE ALREADY LAID CAR PARK
is there a hint of
just ignore the little woman about this?

now that our Ricker is very old he sometimes loses a word
he's lost a word just now
the word he wants is hiding behind another word or term
every time he searches for the word he gets
toxic shock
that's not what he wants for the present purpose
you will have heard of
post traumatic shock syndrome
PTSD
so that means it must be
disorder not syndrome
post traumatic shock disorder
and so he has the missing word
the word he wanted was
traumatic
or it may have been
he's still not sure
there are three things going on here
trauma - a bang on the head, pr a broken leg
then there's
shock
now shock has been used in times past to refer to the
effects of blood loss
and the surge of hormones that come with physical trauma
so the second thing is the effects of having a
now healed injury
the third thing is
having similar psychological and hormonal consequences of
witnessing something terrible happening to someone else
a near miss for yourself
or something really nasty happening to, say, a pet
and so we run to the actual word Ricker lost
hysterical
women used to be said to be hysterical because
they had a womb with associated ovaries and hormones
Ricker is very particular about words and he gets
hissy about misleading use of words
it is only recently that mental illness has been
'acceptable'
on account of 'cos he watches
Le Tour de France cycling...
he sees the ads in between and
most of them are for charities
and
Guide Dogs for the Blind
and
the RNIB
Royal National Institute for the Blind
or
Royal National Institute of Blind People
the real problem is the way
medical professionals use technical terms that
mean something different to them
from what they lean their patients to believe they mean
technically people can be
blind
or
vision impaired
but the Guide Dogs people and the RNIB
have picked up this term
partially sighted
strictly speaking
partially sighted means
suffering from
hysterical blindness
and if a person has a functioning visual system
but
either
blots out the images
or does not trust that what they can 'see'
is really there...
a guide dog
will give them confidence to walk about
a guide dog may also be a great help to
a person who is
blind or vision impaired
but it is a mistake to assume that
in an ideal world
everyone with a vision disturbance or blindness
would benefit from having a guide dog
guide dogs could
restore confidence to a person who has
any sort of
agoraphobia
particularly if that is vision based
if you wear glasses - specs
you are sending a message
I don't see too well
and a guide dogs sends that message more loudly
somebody else who does not see too well
may not want to send that message and will
either blunder about or more likely, these days
wear contact lenses
some vision impaired people would not want to
for instance, attract pick pockets
by having a guide dog
there is this standard piece of
medical gallows humour
the consultant says
they have patients who are in because of a disability
but if I set off the fire alarm
it's the patients who 'can't walk'
who are first out of their beds and
off down the corridor
and so
we have
assistance dogs
not just guide dogs for the blind

we think we know why the vision assistance charities have
revived the old
partially sighted
it is probably an attempt to
accentuate the positive
it's probably a bit late to some extent but to
accentuate the positive they should have taken
a leaf out of the book of the
Spastics' Society
who finding
spaz
being used as a derogatory
changed their name to
Scope
they should consider whether
Vision
or
Seeing
are available as charity names
Sight Savers is already taken

14th September 2020

The smelting of aluminium is very
energy intensive
it uses a lot of energy
back in the day when aluminium was an
exotic wonder material
the cost was - well, very high
and in the UK
especially with aluminium being so important to
military aircraft
the government had a special industrial complex built
It was built near Fort William in Scotland it had the ability to produce
42,000 tons or is that tonnes, probably tonnes
42,000,000 kilos
about 100,000 pounds
of aluminium
using
hydroelectric power
and it was probably very important to the UK war effort
but these days despite still being able to
generate that amount of aluminium
that is not the sort of amount of aluminium
an economy such as the UK's requires
We have referred to Lynemouth, Big Georgie and The Ace of Spades
they took over the core production
That closed when the coal ran out
didn't completely run out but the easy to get at stuff ran out
and then there was
Anglesey
and that shut down
but there was a plan
The plan was
Hitachi
would build a new
Wylfa
Nuclear Power Station on Anglesey
to power a new aluminium smelter
and than there was
Redcar and the Dogger Bank Array
and now Hitachi have put it in writing
they will not build Wylfa
The Dogger Bank Array is well on in
being built
Lynemouth ran out of coal
Nuclear is too expensive
major aluminium smelting in the UK will
happen in Redcar using
wind power
it's dead cheap to build a wind farm
it's dead cheap to renew a wind farm
and
howe's about you try to
bomb a wind farm?
how you gonna lock onto a bunch of
big plastic sticks
spread out across miles and miles of open sea?
militarily a wind farm is a very secure power source
slightly unreliable, but very secure
which is why
The British
bury power cables
you may fracture some turbine blades
but even if your subs identify where the connecting cables run
how are you gonna damage them?
and who wants to clean up after a
bomb has hit a nuclear power station?
if you use
floating wind turbines
the connecting cables will be vulnerable to
being cut
so you need a very very large area of
quite shallow seabed
The Dogger Bank, off Yorkshire
and Redcar has massive amounts of the well located
Brown Field Sites



We are getting rather frayed at the edges
we are running this lot from a
smart 'phone
and the smart 'phone is on line
and the lap top isn't
but we have to
1 upload code from the laptop to the 'phone
2 have the 'phone switched on near the laptop
consequently
either by cable of bluetooth
the 'phone seems to be connecting the laptop to
The Internet
and altering software settings
and since the laptop is running Windows 7...
it should not be being updated
what we can report is that we can't be bothered to
fire up the 'phone
every time a thought occurs
and there is an order of magnitude difference between
a bit and a byte
we can say that the traffic on the suite of sites
for September 2020 is
30 gigabytes
not 30 gigabits
there are approximately 9 bits in a byte
since we get the same stat for every site we assume this is
the total not per site
and so we have a responsibility to
1 get things right
2 keep on paying the bills
but we are
mega fed up
and not about to add to our expenses by
taking out a home internet contract
when we have absolutely no idea WHEN we will get
back into the 'office'
if we didn't have
'testing' we would think this epidemic was over
out of an abundance of caution
we are relying on half remembered mantras from
the childhood of superannuated geeks
IF all these
experiments to test religious beliefs
lead to a solid knowledge base
the investment may prove valuable
at the moment we are not distinguishing
died WITH CoViD
from
died FROM CoViD
to some extent this is like lumping together
people who die with tattoos
with people who die due to sepsis following
having a tattoo done
the current regulations are
entirely preparation for the
Blame Game
that will emerge in a year or so's time
journalists and opposition politicians
have to hold government to account
but
was it Bill Shankly who said
some people think football is
a matter of life and death
it's more serious than that
in that sense
he was talking in a context where
many young men had recently died in two world wars
he was suggesting that if you played for a major team
it should be expected that your exertions would
drive you to an early grave
but for true sporting success you needed
the wholehearted support of
entire communities
when there is no science
trying things at random is a natural recourse
BUT
ignoring the conclusions that those sacrifices bought
and
in the words of Harold Wilson
having a free vote
and repeatedly having free votes until you is
profligate of human life
there are still influential people
David Hockney - artist
who believe that
a life that does not involve smoking
is a damaged life
1 repeating the experiment until
a majority of scientists are convinced
2 repeating an experiment until
all scientists are convinced
3 repeating an experiment until
a majority of people are convinced
4 repeating an experiment until
all people, everywhere, are convinced
in preparation for the coming
blame game
are we still not 100 per cent convinced that
CoViD is a
RESPIRATORY INFECTION?
and one that is
in other people
not in an alien miasma or cloud
we should note that our impression is that
pedal cyclists are the
athletes most likely to die for their team

10th September 2020

Back in the day
if somebody had an obsession
it was said that they had a
kink
sometimes we feel that the people with a
coal kink
should be humoured
perhaps we should forget thinking of coal as a
valued asset
and see it as
a cancer
to be cut out
how much money would the
coal obsessives be willing to loose
just to stay muckey?
once it's gone it's gone
they can't whinge on about empty coal seams
and eventually they will not be able to sell the coal
for a price that doesn't bankrupt them
not when the easy to get at stuff is gone
the only reason they can contemplate digging up more coal is
because they have access to more and more powerful machinery
That is
more and more powerful Dinky Toys
When Coal was King
surface mining for coal in North East England was
carried out by a Bucyrus dragline called
Ace of Spades
Big Geordie
Bucyrus Erie 1550W
Ace of Spades
8 November 2008
Once the largest dradline in Europe
till
The Ace of Spades was built in
January 1992
and habded ove to
Crouch Mining
M D Thomas writing a
Journal Article in
Mining Technology
Journal volume 77
in July 1995....
British Coal opencast (BCO) engaged
Harhischfeger P and H in October 1989 to
design and manufacture
construct and erect
and commission
a P and h 757 dragline
a project in total valued at
15 million pounds
The machine is now the largest dragline in
Eurasia
replacing the previous record-holder
the Bucyrus Erie 1550W
Big Geordie
Ace of Spades operated at
Stobswood
Northumberland
www.earthmovermagazine.co.uk
Nick Drew, March 2014
Ace of Spades weighed
4,000 tonnes
four thousand tonnes
it had a power output of 11,680 killowatts
in diesel terms that's
15,690 horse power
and abucket capacity of 65
it moved 300 million tonnes of spoil
spoil is overburden
the stuff on top of the coal
it was retired in 2003
and went off to a second life in
The United States of America in 2011
This sort of machine typically has a crew of
less than a dozen people
Banks Mining were licenced to remove
3.2 three point two million tinnes of coal from
Shotton
These people are the
energy industry equivalent of
detctorists
the people who despoil archeological sites
in serch of trinkets
The purpose of
Ace of Spades, when in Northumberland was to
provide coal to
Lynemouth Power Station
so that it could supply power to
The Alcan - Aluminium company of Canada -
Rio Tinto Alcan
Lynemouth Aluminium Smelter
and now???
Alcan are gone and the powerstation is burning
biomass to feed the National Grid
and the shit from the coal diggings is
being washed out of the cliffs onto the beach
AND??
we suspect that power from the
Dogger Bank Wind Turbine Array
will be used to power a,bR> new aluminium smelter in Redcar
we have a few very boring pics of
contractors putting drains into a
possible site
near Redcar (British Steel) Railway Station

7th September 2020

It has to be said that platform 2 at Redcar Central station
The Matchstick Platform
is a lot shorter than the original,
still in place without track,
Platform 2
and a lot shorter than the in use original Platform 1
it's about a car and a half short of a six car
TransPennine Express Train
BUT IT'S FALLING APART
rotten to the core


We made reference to
Wright's Tower House
on Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough
what we didn't say was that
only the corner half of the shop was demolished to
make way for a
'stylish new' Macdonald's
half of it is still there and just being
slowly eaten by the developer mice



Back in the day - the 1960s?
there was a popular song, well presented
the 'hook' of which was
girl
you'll be a woman soon
soon you'll need a man
and it my have been that lyric that inspired the
catch phrase
a woman needs a man
like
a fish needs a bicycle
there is a story about a man who was a
slow learner - as we would say these days
and as a boy he had been drilled into believing that
having sex was a bad, bad thing
and then for whatever reason it was decided that he should be married
and he was married but he would not consummate the marriage because
having sex was a bad bad thing
in the sense of his failure to respond when his new wife said
we should have sex now
and this is a day when nobody really considered removing
pubic hair
so both had quite luxuriant bush
and so it was that the wife persuaded the husband that
it would be a good idea for them to go into the
tobacco blending business
we're not going to have sex
we're just going to blend your tobacco with mine
a fruit by another name
is just as sweet
if you hide sex from children if you build it up as
a fate worse than death
you can give them a 'complex'
and that can develop into a
fetish
a fetish that could be dangerous
declared and perceived 'sexualities'
have multiple origins
in women
the concept of
individual distance
can be significant
individual distance is the distance from
somebody else
at which a person begins to feel uncomfortable
take two people who come across a person with a compound fracture
a broken bone with the splinter poking out and bleeding
one person may not want to be within twenty metres
of that person
the other person may be
magnetically drawn to the scene
Ricker recalls coming across a
raw golly
a featherless chick that had fallen from the nest and died
Ricker was fascinated
Edward, the friend he was with, was appalled and dragged
Ricker away
there is no sexual element in these cases
a woman who has been told NEVER to allow a
man or a boy
ANYWHERE NEAR HER
for fear of a
FATE WORSE THAN DEATH
and in need of being
fondled and fucked
may turn to other women for relief
Have the people who sought to
protect her from unwanted pregnancy
done her a service in the means they have employed?
it's a simple thing
cross the road when the green man shows
don't cross the road when the red man shows
but if you are too young
don't cross the road if you are alone
at what stage is a child safe to
cross the road alone?
at what stage is a child safe to be
fondled?
Ricker once went on a mission to
a sink estate in Middlesbrough
with the
Tees valley Wildlife Trust
because somebody had got funding to do a survey of
water voles
it was quite interesting
the two things the children were fixed on
they were not with their parents
but the community accepted the Trust people as
sort of 'supply teachers' people who were safe with their kids
two things...
the children would not
cross a road
the entertainment involve kite flying
the little boy declined to take the kite across an
empty field
so as to be able to run back to Ricker
into the wind and get the kite aloft
and so we have
territory, home range, and separation anxiety
all problems with
personal development
not, you're too young to do that
you should NEVER, EVER do that
and language is so important
when Eston Grammar School's building was turned over to
Gillbrook Comp.
some rats that had been intended for
dissection by A level students were
left behind in a prep room freezer
when the South African dissident Oxbridge graduate
it was 1977 and his 'mate' Steve Beko had just been killed
when he found out that there were rats in the freezer
he insisted on having one thawed out so he could
dissect it for his class
in front of his class
and the kids liked that
that was OK
until one of them went home and told the family that
teacher had
cut up a real live rat in class
and the headteacher was met with an
anti-vivisection delegation
just that one word embelishment
live
rael live
meaning to the kid
genuine
not a picture in a book
at Cotham in Redcar
the Grammar School
bred and killed and dissected rats in A level biology
harbouring live vermin
a real no no in Eston
and that sort of
deprivation
is not NOT related to a shortage of money



There are days when we dive into this code and....
It's all getting very complicated
We remember the day the government announced that
All schools should achieve
above average performance
it was very quickly pointed out that
however the standard and achievements
vary
the average will always be
higher than half the results and lower than half the results
However, the media would complain that
by 2024 all schools must do better than the 2020 average
is
a confused message
back in the day when it was
politically acceptable for politicians and not just the media to
regard the populace as utter morons
there were two simple public health messages
that we do not hear these days
Wash your hands before touching food
Coughs and sneezes spread diseases
and so
we don't say
sanitise your hands as you enter Greggs
we say, wah your hands incessantly, and eat incessantly


anyhow
we want to develop this idea of
management by numerical targets
this, particularly with regard to
The Police
We have heard recently that it has been suggested that
police should be trained in
conflict resolution
Ricker remembers things about being young
as in the average age of a copper time was the lads would stand at the urinals and
compete to see who could
jack off highest onto the wall above
The Porcelain
young men are very adrenaline sensitive
Here's the problem that targets cause
in this instance
The Police are set response time targets on reports of incidents
coming in from the public
The police call handlers categorise the calls into
emergency and non-emergency
naturally we have to be confused
in the UK
999 is for emergencies but
routine calls are????
well we don't know
they could be
111
or they could be
101
shrug
lets stick to 999
so the handler not the caller chooses emergency or routine
and so the MANAGEMENT say we want to be judged on
how quickly we arrive on scene at incidents WE decide are emergencies
and we don't want anybody expecting us to turn up at all to
boring reports
on the other hand
here is the crux
the public are not too fussed as to whether a cop car turns up to
a drunk in the road in
five minutes
or
ten minutes
but they want the cops to turn up to a burglary
before the rain washes the finger prints away
if the cops took a little time to get to scene a few seconds later
but
without WITHOUT
RAISED ADENALINE LEVELS
a lot of
death by cop
in transit
and
on scene
could be avoided
and that is not down to better training
it's down to better
performance assessment

We thought that since the original web site is
Redcar based
we would do a little bit of
the Secret Life of Redcar
style history
back in the day
during the second world war
industry was using quite a lot of
whale oil
we always forget the dates exact name of the
the McKewen Bridge on Redcar Trunk Road
the nanny great thing hiding in plain sight in Redcar is
Wilton International
It used to be called
ICI Wilton
we need to introduce a product to you
Fuel Oil
also known as heavy oil, marine fuel, furnace oil or
bunker fuel
it is a fraction obtained from
petroleum distilation
the distilation - same as distilling whiskey
the distilation of crude oil
as itself it is defined as
any liquid fuel that can be burned in a furnace or boiler
to generate heat
or
in an engine to generate power
liquid is a moot point
ships that run on bunker fuel have to keep it
heated
to keep it
liquid
it is any oil based fuel that has to be
at 42 degrees C or 108 degrees F
in order to catch alight
it is made of long chain - high molecular weight
hydrocarbons - molecules made of
hydrogen and carbon
mainly alkanes, cycloalkanes and aromatics
first -over on
Seal Sands
they take from the crude oil
by distillation
propane, naphtha, gasoline, jet fuel
then they take
diesel and lubricating oils
bunker oil is what is left and is not
asphalt - road tar
there's a tunnel under the
River Tees
that brings the bunker oil to
Wilton
to the Olifin 6 cracker
in 1973 bunker oil produced
16.8 per cent of electricity in the US
not any more
the burning of natural gas
mainly methane
got cheaper and stayed that way
if these days they ever re-light a
coal burning power station
they first warm it up by burning a quantity of
bunker oil
number 6 oil
requires correctly engineered systems for
storage - could go solid like pitch in a tank
if not heated
pumping and burning
on that scale kerosine is
number 2 oil
and number 6 has to be stored at
38 degrees C 100 degrees F
and heated to 65 to 120 C
before it can be pumped
there is a similar product
to British Standard 2869
Class G heavy fuel
number 6 can contain up to
3 per cent surphur
this means if they are shut down
sulphuric acid is generated
and rots the guts out
and that dear friends is why....
we keep having
flaring
over Wilton
despite the words of
SABIC
they reckon
Redcar residents' lungs
are more resistant to sulphuric acid than
their cracker
if they can't shift the products
they can't shut it down
because sulphuric acid would condense inside
and wreck it
so the product - chemical intermediates
has to be burned off - flared

what the plant aims to do is to
convert big heavy alkanes
into cute little
alkenes
if we knew what
7000 kiloPascals of pressure was
we coud tell you that the plant needs
high temperature
high pressure
and catalysts
to do it magic
WHEN it's doing it
Seal Sands will have
what they call
Cat Crackers
catalytic crackers
their magic is to turn
in simple terms
diesel into synthetic gasoline
as opposed to gasoline distilate
Traditionally... Wilton olifin 6 operated at
750 to 900 degrees C
in aprocess called
steam cracking or
pyrolysis
at lower temperatures - 500 degrees
you get needle coke
used to make electrodes for
steel and aluminium
arc furnaces




we have had instructions from
The Management
we have to plug
mention
their other web site
www.gotta.av.it
Click here for av it


we want to do a bit more of the
uplifting story and
we include two pictures of the same plant
taken at different times
to show that
the plant is
actually growing there

brave heart
uplifting in these difficult times

Tees Valley, UK
Good enough for
Government Work

4th May 2020

Here's the plan!
Whenever we update this file
the updated version will appear first
perhaps not by very long
at
www.our.st
Our Street
the slot in the template

we have had instructions from
The Management
we have to plug
mention
their other web site
www.gotta.av.it
Click here for av it

4th July 2020

according to paypal
nobody, absolutely nobody
has donated one thin dime
to the support of this web site
that is interesting
we should clarify a comment that may appear
somewhere on this site
the spat we have had with our ISP
Internet Service Provider
is not about content
it revolves around a very clumsy strategy
designed to convert contracts from
manual renewal
to
automatic renewal
so several of our sites are now on
automatically annually renewable contracts
just need to keep enough money in the bank
and not get the card cancelled
as our Ringtons deliverer said
when introducing a price rise
times must be hard

1st September 2020

We have this notion
we propose that all students who
graduate from
Oxford University
and
Saint Andrew's University in Scotland
be given the same degree
it would be a bit like an MBA
it would be an
MN
and that would be
Master of Networking
In essence
people who go to St. Andrews
are so rich they don't need jobs or skills
they just need an appropriate other
Students who go to Oxford
my need a job but on the basis
It's not what you know, it's who you know
there is a dimension of
Emperor's New Clothes
about this
when Oxford gets an
Ace Blagger
into the role of Prime Minister
takes one to know one
he or she sees through the
Oxford smoke and mirrors
and looks for results
We are not going to research
Carnegie Mellon University
beyond saying that it is and has been
an MIT style institution
a Technology Institute
not a
Con-artists' Conservatoire
Carnegie spent a lot of money on education
but not in
Ivy league universities
IV is Roman numerals for 4
don't care what they are called but they are
the US equivalent of
Oxbridge - Oxford and Cambridge
Carnegie spent money on
library services but not so much on
library buildings
he paid for
music lessons - not church organs
and he gave money to schools if they
cut their links with religion
sometimes there is reference to
The University of Life
Carnegie saw a distinction
he promoted
learning
learning of knowledge and skills
he did not promote
a Teenage Freemasonry
he was interested in, shall we say
wealth creation
not
wealth concentration

in a sense universities began by
providing a staycation alternative to
The Grand Tour
for lower tier gentry
but they branched out into
training priests and training lawyers
the training of
barristers
the majority of people who have been
granted audience in
Her Majesty's Courts of Law
the training of barristers is in two parts
The academic and the vocational
during the vocational section
a candidate must
' attend qualifying sessions with their
Inn of Court
These are professional development events of
an educational and collegiate nature
which are arranged by or on behalf of the Inn
our Ricker has forgotten the term
and it is no longer published
but the essence is
You have to attend and eat a minimum number of
Evening Meals
within the confines of your Inn
Eating in Hall
in uni terms
not having done that is why Ricker has a lower class of degree
it's about
Networking
a working barrister wants to stand up in court
and think
that person representing the opposition
the defence to my prossecution
the prosecution to my defence
I've seen him with soup down his front and
roaring drunk
that makes me feel less nervous

but what can you say about the universities of today?
a government does not see a steelworks as
a source of steel
they see it as a source of National Pride
they see it as a source of JOBS
if you can walk you can sign on at the steel works
if you can't walk, you can sign on at the university
priority number one for universities is
provide sheltered employment for
the vulnerable
Those who can, do
those who can't, teach
most people are probably aware that court cases come in
degrees of importance
different grades of judges
without too much detail
all the different styles of court proceedings can
be divided into two layers
those where the sides can be represented by
a barrister
and those where the sides must be represented by
a legal team lead by a QC
a QC is a Queen's Counsel
he or she is really there to represent
The Queen
long long long ago
they would have been
King's Counsel
and one day will be again, one day
there are therefore two stages in advancement
being called to the bar
stage one a being granted audience
stage 2
taking silk
becoming a QC
in one sense
if you show good judgement but
do not advocate well for your client
you may be seen as more like a candidate for
The Bench
stop making arguments and start making judgements
become a judge
this entire system depends on the availability of
recognised
expert witnesses
witness for the defence
witness for the prosecution
witness for the court
all the professional participants
have a primary responsibility to
The Court
and hence to
The Crown or
The People
and here is the deal
hearsay evidence is not allowed in court
witnesses must confine themselves to
what they learned - observed, heard, etc.,
when they were there
not what they have heard since
or concluded
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
this clearly does not apply to
expert witnesses
because
if they were there they would be
witnesses
not
expert witnesses
an expert witness is allowed to address the court
without being a barrister but
only in the form of answers to questions from
barristers
and judges
who are by definition barristers
this is intended to bring
clarity and speed of action to court proceedings
it often does not work out that way because
expert witnesses often do not get an opportunity to
have a quiet word with
advocates
and another thing
in a lot of proceedings
the roles of
interpreter
and
expert witness can get blurred
in an important case with large legal teams
what the interpreter is doing could be checked
but not in low rent proceedings
it is - in the UK - not all that long since
the two sides - defence and prosecution
had to disclose the essence of their case to the opposition
a lot of cases used to hinge on an ambush
dramatic but not just
BR> the whole 'networking thing' took on a very different character when
socials intended to help people feel their way in the profession
got mixed up with
socials intended to help people feel their way around
potential life partners



recently our Ricker had the opportunity to visit
Middlesbrough
he noted a couple of things related to recent entires below Teesside Magistrates Court has been re-named along the lines of
Teesside Justice Centre
what ricker noted was that the concrete walls of the building
have what some call an
exposed agregate surface finnish
and the rock chippings exposed are not the sandstone of the Town Hall
he also noticed that the two recently completed office blocks near
the Town Hall are faces in
white bricks
and although the buildings do not have
'public names'
one is designated
Central Buildings
and the other
Peacock House
white bricks... Peacock Buildings
has the architect built a couple of
tributes to the
Pease Family?
by the by
we did mention
The Owners of The Middlesbrough Estate
the people who laid out the structure of Middlesbrough
they were a group of
Quaker Business people
and finally
Ricker brought back some pics of the state outside
Teesside Crown Court





when people talk about
financial services
often they are talking about
Insurance
a lot of what drives commercial activuty is
big compensation pay outs encourage organisations to
take out more and more cover
and in many ways the courts work as follows
the defendant says
I have been planting bulbs in gardens for
twenty years
I always plant them pointy end downwards
but because I have been doing this for twenty years
I am a world authority on bulb planting
those other people who buy bulbs and get fabulous floral displays must either be
paying a lot of money for their bulbs
or they must be planting
mutant Frankenstein bulbs
and they will be wildly unsafe

24th August 2020

The universal - university - fuckwits
have driven us to the
outer edges of the universe with this one
beyond the book of words
beyond the big book of words
beyond Google
We have had recourse to
The Big Big Big book of words
break out the
oxford English Dictionary
Fomes
plural fomites
Latin - fomes - fomitis
touchwood - tinder
the morbic matter of a disease
any porous substance capable of
absorbing and retaining
contagious effluvia
we are back to the trendies
yer modern classic version of
fomic transmission is
sour dough starter
1899 R F Burton
Journal of the Geographical Society
This must be an efficatious fomite for
cutaneous and pectoral disease
rare - an incorrect back formation from
fomites
the whole idea here is
you get a droplet or series of droplets
of a yeasty substance that lodges in a porous surface
textiles, paper, natural equivalents
and for a while all is well as the yeast lives off the
sugars carried with it in the splash droplet
there are two viable means of
survival
food supplies last until, say, rain
washes the organism to a better place
the organism goes into
suspended animation - spore, etc
fomic transmission does not apply
if the droplet does not contain a food supply
water etc
or
the organism is incapable of spore formation
that s to say
it is not fomic transmission if neither of these apply



sand
and our thoughts turned to
pumice
it's all about like the way the manufacturers make
glass wool insulation
they just spray molten glass into ?
swirling blasts of cooling air
the lava erupts into relatively cold and wet air
and kind of shatters as it solidifies
so we have three basic types of sand
the stuff that forms during the eruption
the stuff that is broken up layers of the shells of
sea snails and the like
and the special variant on that
coral sand
broken up coral reef
weathering comes into this at a very minor and later stage
pressure compacts sand into layers and you get
sandstone and limestone
and you can build with that
especially if you haven't yet invented
cement and concrete
but
sandstone and limestone are much more vulnerable to
weathering - freeze thaw, water flow, etc
that lava that sort of oozed out and set in big blocks



we think we need to say something about
three things that need to be distinguished
a pathogen
a vector
a spore
pathogens are things that
generate pathology in a patient
and pathology is pathos
a sad situation
some schools of medical knowledge divide
conditions and situations into
pathological and physiological
pathological - something gone wrong
physiological - all quiet on the Western Front
we're gonna just slip this in here
The British fought the
First Boer War because
Dutch settlers were denying
First Nation South Africans
equal constitutional rights and
also discriminating against other settlers of
British origin
it was the Second Boer War that was sparked by
the discovery of diamonds
back to the medicine
religions are strongest where - so to say
intellects are weakest
lots of deprived people can be characterised as being
chippy
they get a chip on their shoulder
they tend to thnk that
people who don't worshi with them
even if they nominally share the same religion
are trying to
undermine their religious faith
getting at them
on account of their religion
we will therefore reference The French
in 1916
not long before the Great 'Flu Epidemic
there was a row in France
Somebody figured out that
a major line of transmission of
typhoid
was
that all sorts of people
but especially sick people
would flock to a
Bishop
and scramble to
kiss his ring
mouth to mouth contamination
we have said before
apart from fungi
very few pathogens can survive outside a living host
for very long
there are two ways a pathogen can endure over time
it can reproduce - resetting its life cycle to zero
and that requires a host - to feed on
some can use method two
in bad times
many fungi and a few bacteria sucha as tetanus
can form spores
we have also said that
one a spore - you need a wound to
essentially digest the wall of the tin can
you have holed yourself up in
Trogen Horse style
and even in your tin can
although you don't 'live' and so you don't need
food and oxygen
your tin can can rust away if you are not kept
moist - in soil or amimal excrament
what we are getting around to is this concept of< R> fomites
at this point we move back from
CoViD19 to tuberculosis
To quote the book of words
In developed countries
human TB occurs almost exclusively from
inhalation of organisms
dispersed as droplet nuclei from a person with
pulmonary - lung - TB
whose sputum smear is positive
M.- that's mycobacterium, part bacterium, part fungus
M. tuberculosis may float in the air for several hours
thus increasing the chance of spread
fomites appear to play no role n their spread
the whole thing is exactly the same
as CoViD
the young repelling the pathogen despite contamination
the elderly copping it
BAME folk being less resistant
the whole nine yards
and so to
vectors
and the associated group
intermediate hosts
you have malaria
you can't give another person malaria
you can give malaria to a mosquito
that mosquito can gice malaria to another human
you can isolate people who have malaria
or you can exterminate the mosquitoes
but you have to isolate the affected patients
FROM mosquitoes - not people
sometimes social distancing won't work
there appears to be no intermediate host involved in
CoViD19
the virus does not appear to get into
blood meals taken during insect bites
if it does it would expalain spread without
human contact
and Scotland with its midge plagues
would be the first place we would expect to see that

17th August 2020

We think the story of
Grey Towers, Nunthorpe
is a bit more interesting
Grey Towers was built for
William Randolf Innes Hopkins
between 1865 and 1867
and it was a bit odd
and we have a link here
It was designed by John Ross a
Darlington desgner who also used
help from
Edward William Godwin
The building is faced with blue flint stone
said
The Builder
at the time
BUT
we believe that it was actually faced with
whin stone
from the Teesdale quarries that
were the basis of the< BR> quarrying arm of George Hodsman's business
the quarry that was active at amalgamation with Hargreaves in 1963
was and is
High Force
but there were also
Force Garth
and
Bow Leas
and this name Bow Leas...
You know that the late
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
was before marriage
Elizabeth Bowes Lyon
so we get
Bows as in pretty pink bows
and not bows as in the prow of a ship
or Bose
The thing is...
Hodsmans took over quarrying the Whin Cill
when it was no longer to quarry or mine it for lead
and
The London Lead Company
shut up shop
any road up
The most interesting thing about Grey Towers is that
Hopkins went bust
BECAUSE
his company
LLoyd and Co, Hopkins, Gilkes and Company
of Teesside
provided the ironworks for
The Tay Bridge
the one that blew away and killed a train full of punters
Now then there will have been a
Hustler School in Middlesbrough
because
Hopkins' brother-in-law was
William Thomas Hustler
of
Acklam Hall
and he bought up the mortgage on Grey Towers
bought it for family honour not use
it stood empty from
1879 until Authur Dorman bought it in 1895
and the second baronet or whoever inherited in 1931
sold it to a Middlesbrough JEWELLER called
T Gibson Poole
who had been born in Dudley
This place had 30 bedrooms....
and Poole wasn't interested in them
he - being mayor of Middlesbrough
bought it to
give to the town as a
sanitarium
so people with tuberculosis
could have their beds shoved out into the gardens
in 1942 the TB problem had got so bad that
the 30 bedroom house was converted to offices to administer
a santorium built in the grounds
Middlesbrough's in 20th century
Nightingale
and when the NHS finally got a grip on TB
it stood empty until it was
re-done as
condos - condominiums
flats, apartments round the year 2000
see Bowlees Cottages .com
Bowlees Visitor Centre
This is Durham
visitbowlees.org.uk
On the other hand
in another part of the wood...
Bowes Museum
and that is bows as in pretty pink bows
cos it was built by
John Bowes
art collector
born London 1811
died Streatlam County Durham
1885
the museum he built and left to
The Nation or some such
contains within its French Chatteau walls
El Greco, Francisco goya, Canaletto, Fragonard, Boucher
and the famous automata
the fishing silver swan
not that real swans eat fish
it's in Barny
Barnard Castle
and the castle and half of Upper Teesdale
belong to
Lord Barnard
doesn't stop the locals calling the town
Barn ad castle
or Barney
but
if you are called
Bowes
and you fancy building a chatteau up north
wouldn't you be attracted to a village called
Bows
we've had a change of
Lord Barnard
but the one incharge in the 1960s.....
the estate is probably called
The Raisby estate
and The Raisby Estate has mineral rights in
Upper Teesdale
it has the rights to all that lovely yellow sand on the
beaches between Redka - Redcar - and Sandsend
on the North Yorkshire coast
but only BEFORE the River Tees washes it off the estate
and so
local authorities used to by
whin stone and slag to make up roads
Lord Barnard persuaded the authorities to
change the s[ecifications so that
his sandstone could be used for building and road foundations
soft as shit and you can collect it with a
kiddies bucket and spade
you have to blast for whin
potholes?
built on Raisby sand
The Whin Sill or Great Whin Sill is
a tabular layer of the igneous rock dolerite in
County Durham, Northumbria and Cumbria
it is the foundation of
High Force Waterfall
on the River Tees
and those castly things
Lindisfarne, Dunstanborough, and Bamborough
and a little thing called
Hadrian's Wall
The Little Whin Sill is in Weardale
we sometimes get in a bit deep
we like this story about the whin sill
the idea is that this was so much more than a
volcanic eruption
this was hundreds of square miles of land covered in
lava
you see pictures of the expansion of
volcanic islands and the red hot lava
turns instantly black as it hits water
the theory of the
Great Whin Sill
is that it took thirty years to cool
and in the process it turned the
limestone
it settled near
into
sugar limestone
this is where our geography lets us down
this effect is northern as we said
but we know about clints and grikes
we know about
limestone pavement
natural limestone that has fractured in a way
that it looks like humans laid it
and the problem is
so far as we know the sand on
the beaches of North Yorkshire is
not ground up limestone
but
ground up volcano stuff
Hodsmans did quarry sandstone
down south in a place called
Spaunton
and when we say down south we mean
near Pickering in North Yorkshire
in conclusion
we suspect that when the Great Whin Sill was formed
the heat it brought
fractured both the carbonferous limestone and the
igneous rocks from previous eruptions
and so we get pockets of what may be called
rotten granite
granite all busted to pieces by the heat from
more recent eruptions
but we are afair way out of our depth here
rottn granite is also called
more politely
decomposed granite
in the literture it is said to have been
weathered
but we thnk this
heat from huge pools of lava
makes a lot more sense
Although there is a castle in
Barnard Castle
the main 'home' of Lord Barnard is or was
Raby castle
and the estate is called the Raby Estate
and how the quarry company came to be called
Raisby
we don't know
but it no longer exists in that form


Oh we have a fresh little gem of the
Dorman Variety
we are not going to copy out the results of our
latest researches but a couple of things stand out
as at around 2011
the 4th Baronet Dorman of Nunthorpe
was still alive
was a tax accountant
and had a daughter who was born in 1984
and so unless the law changes and she becomes
a dame
it look like the baronetcy will died out one day soon
However, much more interestingly
aside from most of these baronets being
lawyers and accountants - not industrialists
The third baronet was at and graduated from
Brasenose College, Oxford
1941 - 42
and
that would be around the time
Tommy's smartest son
Peter
graduated from
Brasenose College, Oxford
quelle surprise

10th August 2020

We're gonna kick Tommy Wopson
What his first girlfriend Milcie Sinton called him
firstly we have learned the difference between
a knight and a baronet
if you are made a knight you are title
Sir Joe Bloggs
later we may return to
Tommy Atkins as the British Army equivalent of Joe Bloggs
Sir Joe Bloggs and the current Mrs Bloggs - Lady Bloggs
end of
if however you are a baronet
you are
Sir Joe Bloggs bart
and the kicker
the eldest of your sons to outlive you
gets to be
Sir James Bloggs bart
and so on
in that sense somebody made a baronet
is seen as somebody founding a dynasty
with descendents expected to keep up the cause
thus
if you win an Olympic medal or write an important book
you could get a knighthood
if you found a massive industrial conglomerate
you could be made a baronet to encourage the family
not to sell out when you die
and so
Arthur Dorman
made a baronet but that's just a hereditary knighthood
not Lord Dorman, not in the House of Lords
Sir Arthur Dorman's father was a
courrier in the leather trade, in London ish
so nice try but no cigar, no seat on the red leather benches
we are now on the third of fourth
Sir younamehim Dorman bart
never heard a peep out of any of them
except the first
we return to Tommy
Tommy's dad cme down from Low Houslop Farm near
Woolsingham in county Durham
and he and another lad called John Ord
got jobs as farm lads on the
Grey Towers Estate
later known for a while as
Pool Hospital
around about the time Tommy is in France
Arthur Dorman is buying the Grey towers estate at
Nunthorpe
new money
not at all well established
and by now John Ord and William Robson
have get well established on
Home Farm
but now William Robson is just a frequent visitor because
he has upped and gone to work for
The Diamond Boring Company at Port Clarence
where one
Don Revie is his boss
and where ownership of this
salt works has passed from the American Diamond Boring Company to
The United Alkali Company
and Donnie's son Donnie his working for William Robson
and one of William's sons Tommy
is visiting Home Farm and Grey Towers as a guest
and Tommy marries on of John Ord's daughters - Bessie
but that is a little later
Tommy is officially
Tom baker Robson
to distinguish him from his elder half brother
Thomas Robson
and he marries Elizabeth Ord in 1923
and after failing to get his
battle-field commission regularised...
where does he go to work?
at Hodsmans who are...
reclaiming the Bell Brothers Ironworks site that
Arthur Dorman has just bought
did Tommy fail to remain in the army?
or did Arthur Dorman say
to the army
I need him back here, your war is over
in 1866 Arthur Dorman was apprenticed to an ironmaker in
Stockton-on-Tees
we're gonna slip in something about
Tees
whilst we remember
there is not and never has been a
Tees Valley Borough Council
There is and has long been a
Test Valley Borough Council
the River Test is in Hampshire
our Ricker was at a conference once and there was some contention
as to why The Tees had two delegations in attendance
turns out, one of the delegations was a lone woman
representing the River Test
where the water cress comes from
Arthur Dorman did not have the sort of
apprenticeship in the iron and steel industry
you may imagine
at the end of it in 1873, he set up on his own as a
Metal Broker
In 1876 he teamed up with
wait for it
Albert de Lande Long
1844 - 1917
and they bought
West Marsh Ironworks in Middlesbrough
by 1901 they employed 3,000 people and
produced 180,000 tins of steel a year
when dear old Arthur bought out Bell brothers in 1902
he gained strategic control of the
coking coal producing collieries of
Brancepeth, Brownley and Tursdale
ad during World War 1
Dorman Long became one of
Britain's leading manufacturers of
artillery shells
and so it was in 1917 that Dorman Long opened
Redcar Steelworks
In 1929 Dormans bought
Bolckow and Vaughan
two years before Arthur died in Grey towers in Nunthorpe
The knighthood was 1918
and the bart came in 1923
we always think of
BART when we hear bart
Bay Area Rapid Transit
somewhere in California
all these
Tyneside Tossers
rabbiting on about
Armstrong making guns on the Tyne Scotswood
nothing to fire from them without Dormans
it's hard to think why a bloke living in Nunthorpe
with a steelworks in Redcar
built a museum in memory of his son who died
during the Boer War - not in action
typhoid
in Middlesbrough
you see this is where we get let down by
research recollections
we have no idea what a currier did in the leather trade
it came after tanning
it was about stretching, polishing, colouring etc. leather
between tanning and aking into items
but it may have been quite smelly
the lad Arthur was educated at
Christ's Hospital School in London
and he didn't have an apprenticeship in Stockton-on-Tees
it was at Richardson, Johnson and Company
at their rolling mills in
Thornaby on Tees
sarth of the riva
at grey Towers from
1895 to 1931
if we were really really desperate to find something to do we would
find out exactly what the
Gilchrist-Thomas Process was
and how it differed from
The Bessemer Process
note differed FROM
not differed TO
as in yellow is different to orange
it could be that
Gilchrist-Thomas is about ironmaking
we know the Bessemer Process was about
making steel from iron
and so Dormans bought the Britannia Ironworks in Middlesbrough
and set up to use the new method that had been originally demonstrated
on the Bolckow and Vaughan site
agh no! we bin caught out again
poor poor knowledge
we have banged on about Lackenby and its
BOS Plant
every now and again another piece of the jig-saw
falls into place
we said - honest we did, months or years ago
the iron ore from the
Eston Hills
was shipped by rail from
Eston to the Durham coal field -
Consett Iron Works
and then they reversed and brought the coal to the ironstone mines
and we said that they had to blend ironstone from the
dark side
the west coast - Workington
with the ironstone from Eston
because there was too much
phosphorous
in Eston Ironstone
Bessemer
used an air lance to control the carbon content of steel
Gilchrist-Thomas used a basic - not acidic - liner in the
Bessemer converter to remove the phosphorous
and later on some Swiss or Austrian chaps
used oxygen instead of Bessemer's air
to speed up the process from a day or two
to half an hour
to give you
BOS Plant
Basic Oxygen Steelmaker
It's not entirely clear but
it seems that
alkali is used for liquids
and basic is used for solids the likes of rocks

back in whenever, the days of monochrome TV - probably
there was an interesting bloke on the box
probably BBC 2
was BBC 2 polychrome
maybe BBC TV had a sort of
late night high brow slot in monochrome...
This bloke was called
John Julius Norwich
he was an aristocrat and an art historian
we mention him only because his name was
Norwich as current toffs use Wales as a surname
over time but especially during the
Second World War and the following National Service
letters home from the front
or wherever the troops were located
away from their loved ones
would often be signed off
NORWICH
my secret love's no secret any more...
so commonplace that it hardly qualified as a coded message
mere shorthand
NORWICH stood for
kNickers Off Ready When I Come Home
and what it indicates is that with so many men
away from home so much of the time
and the time when they were together with their wives
and girlfriends
being so short and decided by the military and other employers
lots of women had to have sex
at the wrong time of the month
or have no sex at all
this had been fairly standard for toffs who - the men
had almost all been in the military
in the 20th century it became more widespread for other ranks
and thus an irrepressible surge of gay men
who had to come out because they were so numerous
and being gay had to be legalised
it would be interesting to contrast
stats for being gay in men born
in the early to mid 20th century
with the proportion in men born after National Service ended
and so we have the aristocratic
fop
or
dandy
and Tommy's Earl of Essex seemed to fit that category
he had been a lieutenant in the Hussars
before becoming a temporary Captain in the Remount Service
what we know about him was that
after the peace was signed in 1918 or whenever
Tommy had
Retained
stamped in his pay book
and Tommy switched from being
Radar O'Reiley to
Lt.Col. Yardley
to being ADC to The Earl of Essex
at this point we have to admit to owning a picture of Tommy at the time
looking rather foppish
what we do know is that The Earl of Essex - that one, Tommy's
was for ever after
well into
amateur dramatics
Tommy had three things to say about his post war service
whilst retained
the official purpose of his retention was to help with
reparations
Tommy was a renowned
horse whisperer
a world class judge of the value of horses
he and The Earl
toured France
valuing all the horses
and requiring all the 'keepers'
to buy them from
The British Army
all were assumed to be escaped military stock
at this time The Earl was married for the first of
4 times
and it was a part of Tommy's duties to
select suitable
chargers
that the keepers could not afford to buy
for the earl and his lady - not necessarily his wife
to ride around the countryside on
the third Tommy duty was
to man the piano that the troop carted around with them
on their merry way
essentially - and not necessarily entirely after
the armistice - peace
The Earl and Tommy were the core of a pre-cursor to
ENSA
Entertainment National Service Association
or
Every Night Something Awful
the circuses part of the
Bread and Circuses
NAAFI
Navy Army and Air Force Institute
so we have Tommy living the real life
M*A*S*H
and the real life
It Ain't 'arf Hot Mum
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital
but with vets and horses
there is a very interesting point under this
why was there 'confusion' about the ownership of horses
was the
Broad Arrow
simply clipped into their coats and not branded?
or did their coats grow over the brands
or was it simple reparation - taxing the French for
liberating them?
and the question of aristoes having multiple wives and
insufficient, legitimate, male heirs
never quite found the time to stuff their wives at
an appropriate moment
and all that stuff - still dominant today about
gay men not troubling their wives much
and gay men deciding what women want
to justify their own disinterest



You will know by now that our Ricker is
very very old and did most of the things he has done
a long time ago
Ricker watches
Have I got News for You
he does not subscribe to or read
Private Eye
so he knows about a chap called
Ian Hislop
Ian Hislop has some sort of relationship with
the satirical magazine, Private Eye
Back in the days of monochrome TV
when our Ricker lived and worked in London
to him there were two book shops in London
The Modern Book Company
and
Foyles
one day Ricker was walking towards Foyles
without any particular intention to go in
and a man almost burst out of Foyles
and walked towards Ricker as though he recognised him
Ricker definitely recognised
this other Richard - Ingrams - who had such a look of his own brother
Gordon
That Richard was the second editor? of Private Eye
Private Eye founded by Christopher? Booker and Wille Rushton
all very Shrewsbury
and our Ricker has a feeling that that Richard
bequeathed Private Eye to Ian Hislop
because he believed him
too lazy to bother to change it
and so it appears to have proved
Ian Hislop's version of satire is
indiscriminate
the point with Hislop is
don't let the character of your victim
get in the way of a good joke
the laugh is the alpha and omega
the beginning and the end
and this is in concert with the journalism of
don't let the facts get in the way of a good story
and so quite a few people have successfully sued Private Eye
and Hislop has a sort of autistic
but I made people laugh
response to error that devalues any
well targeted barbs
and so to the seed for this particular musing
it does not matter what the facts are we will talk of
Harry Hyams
In Ricker's mind there is some sort of link between
Foyles and Charing Cross Road and Centre Point
There was a road junction in east central London
that was very congested
and the London County Council wanted to widen the road
and improve the junction but
at the time for some reason they did not appear to have the
compulsory purchase powers needed to take over and demolish
the properties in the vicinity
and so they did a deal with the property developer
perhaps he was Harry Hyams
for the surface rights to the land in exchange for the
aerial rights to the same spot
we have to assume that although the council could have
bought the land
the courts and arbitration services would have set
an astronomical value on the site
and so the deal was struck
we will build our traffic island at ground level
and you can build anything you like
on top of it
and he built
Centre Point
it shows the complexity of our Ricker's mind
that he sees Centre Point as a physical manifestation of the
Private Eye column
Pseud's Corner
for some reason he cannot recall Ricker found himself a student
at Sunderland Polytechnic with two of the same tutors he had had at
Durham University
one was known as George
because he was Greek and he had an impossibly long name
they had been demonstrators at Durham and got
more senior, more permanent jobs at Sunderland
demonstrators are generally Ph.D. students
and Ricker's former Durham tutors when at Sunderland
described Ricker's essays as
pithy
short and to the point, not pseud
Ricker regards everything to do with London as
pseud
and as he has said before
people in London think they are
God's gift to humanity because they are
IN London
not because they are FROM London
and so how will this affect people who are rarely in London and
today I shall mostly be
being in Guildford
a little while after Ricker stopped working in London
he get a 'phone call from a chap you actually said
Hi, I'm ringing you from London
like? on behalf of London?
the gist of his spiel seemed to be
what chance do you have of hearing
Ella Fitzgerald sing live
if you don't come back to London?
well actually almost all the people he listed were
as Ricker told him
on
Later with Joules Holland
at the time
before he got into
thrash
it brings us to another issue
the first boss of the BBC
the DG or whatever - not Lord Reith
never listened to the wireless
but he struck up a relationship with the
porter or station master at his local commuter station
and he would ask him each morning
what did you think of last night's entertainment?
and armed with this
vox pop
he would wander into work and appear to
have his finger on the pulse
how many Cabinet Ministers today
'phone of text their childhood nanny
and ask for direction on ongoing government policy?
being
down with the people
and
popular
is the stock in trade
of the oligarch
in a modern democracy


Some people may remember the
Burt Bacharach and Hal David song
The Look of Love
it came from a movie called
critic - Donald Zee - described it as
based on a novel by Ian Flemming
and so the head of MI6 has
Sir James Bond's retirement
bombed flat by the RAF
to force him out of retirement to fight
SMERSH
1967 film
David Niven as Bond
not a Cubby Brocccoli production
we understand Barbara Broccoli
tried to bury it with a re-make
possibly involving Tintin
anyway...
deal or no deal?
Ricker says to himself
all I want to know is
where do they want me to work?
I then walk into the nearest Estate Agents
as the price of a house just like mine in Redcar
then to the bank or building society and
what wages do I need to raise that mortgage?
That's what you pay me
we don't do London Weighting
was the flat reply
London is the place to go when you have money to burn
or launder
not the place to
make your fortune
or even to serve mankind
To Serve Mankind
is the motto of
The City of London University
whether or not the song was in his mind
Elton John's
Yellow Brick Road summed up Ricker's reaction to
the opportunity to retire in his mid-thirties
maybe you'll get a replacement
there's many out there to be found
mongrels who ain't got a penny...
Ricker's dad worked for
The Earl of Essex
at the end of the First World War
and was invited to go to his estate to continue
this work
at some point when Ricker was a teenager
and his half sister had her elder boy in a pram
there was a family trip to a country village called
something like
Lillingstone
not to be confused with
Lullingstone, Roman Villa
to see what Tommy had turned down on the grounds that
it would be a secure job but with
no prospects
The 7th Earl of Essex served as a
Temporary Captain in the
Army Remount Service
alongside Ricker's dad Tommy
and the estate fell into ruin
perhaps it would not have done so if
Tommy had taken up the offer
and the 8th Earl took up farming in Buckinghamshire
and Tommy went home to Teesside and helped run
Hodsmans
a quarrying and roadstone company
that was sold out to
Hargreaves Quarries
later part of RMC
Ready Mixed Concrete
The 7th earl became Earl in 1916
after his father was run over by a taxi cab
Tommy's Earl of Essex died in 1966
and Tommy died in around 1979

do a science degree and come to London
live in a garret and fawn over
oligarchs
or
set up a business selling
party favours
and live to see your daughter become
Queen of England
the route to the top is
sell something really cheap that everybody buys
and buys over and over again
and take a tiny royalty from every sale
the classic example
the Tetrapac cardboard carton
there's an amazing bloke who owns
shed loads of classic cars
who made his money from selling
little dispensers that issue
numbered tickets
so that people can join a queue
and then mill around and not loose their place
in the queue, just wait for their number to be called
laws intended to inspire the next
light bulb moment
create billionaires from daft little ideas
a chap called Lodge
didn't patent the
spark plug
strangely, although the likes of
Marconi
get the legal rights to a lot of Lodge's developments
Lodge seemed to live quite a contented life
perhaps, being 'famous' for having his
thunder stolen because somebody whom he had
bounced an idea off
sought peer review from
published whilst he was on holiday
actually was a pioneer of
Work-Life Balance
that difference between being
gifted
and being
driven



Once upon a time our Ricker had a meeting with
the CPRE
they have changed their name but it used to stand for
Committee for the Protection of Rural England
The gist of what they were saying was
we don't want any more Rural New Towns
the likes of Harlow and Milton Keynes
we want more new Towns on the fringes of
Heavy Industry
the likes of
Redcar and Billingham
and the scientists say
now new housing within 4 kilometers of the likes of
Olifin 6
and the CPRE have more votes than the scientists
like a dog returning to its vomit we return to
Nitram and pril
the Ammonium Nitrate involved in the Lebanon explosion was
impounded due to a safety risk
it was made in the Southern United States and headed for
Africa
it is in a sense a two stage process making ammonium nitrate fertilizer
first you make ammonium nitrate
then you turn it into pril or is that prill?
if you buy table salt you will see an
anti caking agent declared
the explosion in Lebanon happened in the early evening
we do not know what happened
what we can accept as a first working hypothesis is
the ammonium nitrate was impounded because it was in a damgerous state
because it had not been converted into pril
this would have caused it to cake
to set into a huge uneven block
the most likely happening is that
somebody stayed back late at work and
took a jack hammer or JCB
to the lump
hoping to break some off to sell
on the monochrome market
you do not
YOU DO NOT
need to add anything to ammonium nitrate to get it to explode
you simply have to
detonate it
apply a short sharp shock to a lump as opposed to a
slidy all over heap like a pile of really dry rice
that is Nitram
and Nitram is made in
Billingham on Teesside
and the thing that makes
ammonium nitrate into Nitram
is the pril tower that stands on the north approaches to the
Newport Bridge
we could tell you how to turn Nitram into ammonium nitrate
but we ain't going to

3rd August 2020

we thought we would leave the stats a week
so we have the number of positive tests for
22 July and followed by 29th July
Redcar and Cleveland 705 706
Middlesbrough 963 968
North Yorkshire 2,545 2,562
Stockton on Tees 970 980
Sunderland 1,777 1,781
Hartlepool 600 611
Darlington 606 609
Durham County 3,338 3,355
Surrey Heath 433 436
< BR>

if you've been reading this blog during the
epidemic or pandemic
you may have thought Ricker was getting frustrated
that people are not reading the textbooks
here we have to move from the textbooks
or at least away from medical textbooks
you know those weather stories about
hail stones the size of golf balls
they say that snowflakes grow from tiny seeds
they do that artificially on some ski slopes
the thing #we' have learned about this virus
and perhaps many viruses - this being to some extent
the first virus to get so much scrutiny
they say that those big hail stones get big because
the wind and such moves them up and down in cold wet
damp, humid
air
and they layer up
as we understand it
the more humid the air
the less humid the air
the lower the rate of virus transmission
we said before that there is a balance
did you ever see that trick in
domestic appliance shop windows
Currys
they would set up a vacuum cleaner and put the hose on the
blow end
by the way we said we didn't have an idea of how much pressure
there is inside Olefin 6 at Wilton
we said 7,000 kilo Pascals
well here it is
a vaccuum cleaner produces
20 twenty kilo Pascals
and Olefin 6 uses seven thousand kiloPascals
back to Curry's window display
usually a cylinder vacuum
pipe on the outlet
oh the days when you re-sprayed your car, using a
spray gun accessory for the Hoover...
the cleaner would be on the floor of the window display
the pipe would be angled towards the window
and they would put a beach ball
into the air stream
and it would bobble around all day, half way up the window
you take these two things together
drafts keep virus laden water droplets airborne
and available to be inhaled by other people
but in humid conditions
the individual droplets grow to a size where
drafts can't keep them aloft
The Australians - the people dealing with this in winter
discovered this
you know those
insecticuters
probably not familiar with the name
used in butchers and the like
ultra violet lights attract insects
and the fly onto an electrified mesh
we suggest
keep humidity moderately high
and have some sort of ducted fan system that
attracts and condenses the water droplets from the air


29th July 2020
we have to consider the reverse of this
we have to consider the idea that
virus can be emitted in quite large droplets
with low concentrations of virus in them
and then
exposed to very dry air
they - the droplets - are dehydrated
have water removed
making them
smaller
lighter
and with a more concentrated load of virus
making them
likely to stay airborne longer
and
more effectively infectious



We have these fragments of memory from
a long long time ago
we know
Callers Pegasus
was an travel agency type business
so we conclude that
Cantors
was a furniture shop
it's just the sort of thing
people with dementia like...
anyway
random urgings of an insane mind
aside
we are today considering the word
cantor
means the same thing as
precentor
you've never heard of either have you
we will make mad stab and say
we think cantor is Jewish
we have been able to establish
at great personal risk - reaching for
volume 2 of the dictionary
m to z
that precentor is a word used in
some Presbyterian churches etc
one who leads singing in congregation
female precentrix
no need for that these days
in English Cathedrals....
member of the clergy responsible for
general control of musical arrangements
ranked between
the Dean and the Succentor
in more modern terminology
a Minor Canon
to be precise...
Christian churches run long sides
East - West
so the choir has a North Side and a South side
the north and south sides are the long sides because
the axis of the church runs east - west
so the Cantor or Precentor is in charge of the choir on the North side
and the Dean is in charge of the choir on the south side
and so
there's one of those crooner standards
in Italian
cantare
Italian for to sing
Volare sung by Dean Martin
probably rhymed
Volare with cantare
we stop there on the research
when he was quite young our Ricker wrote a letter to
The Sunday Times Magazine in response to a
think piece
by renowned hotelier
Sir Charles Forte
Ricker's line was that he had seldom seen such a
display of hypocrisy and cant
Ricker's letter was published soon after
cant - singing the old songs
insincere or conventional mode of speaking
an expression peculiar to a class
as , thieves cant, slang
to speak hypocritically with
affected piety
what's the modern term
something signalling
virtue signalling
we mention this because of comments by a judge,
at the end of a recent rape trial
concerning the devastation and destruction of
the lives of these nine women...
caused because???
you 'ad 'em and
didn't marry 'em
it does no service to these women to
declare in open court that their lives are now
effectively over

27th July 2020

you know what
that's all a bit garbled
those numbers and such
we have added
next day numbers to show
the difference between
22nd July and 23rd July mostly we see a range from
no new positive tests in
Redcar and Cleveland
to 4 in somewhere else - Hartlepool?

Ricker has a different way of putting that lot together
some people in Redcar will still be alive
who remember
Col Rose
Colin
he was what Coatham had for a careers advisor
the thing was
you didn't get a session or interview with Mr Rose
he just had this one thing he did
he had the school signed up
God knows how
to the
Public Schools Appointments Bureau
so one day our Ricker gets told
this summer you have a placement at
Kodak in Harrow, Harrow not Stevenage
Harrow they made films and photosensitive papers
Stevenage they processed your pics
so before the term was invented
Ricker was an intern in the
Quality Assurance labs at Kodak
and the people on the shop floor had an industrial concept of
a sample
they would send up these plastic screw topped jars
labelled
Solvent 3
although the labs were QA labs
actually their main purpose was to check that as little
silver
got into the drains
as possible
Ricker did silver assays
being as how he was the intern
he was given the old manual gear to do his tests
and then after he had put in half a day getting his results
the boss would zap the sample through the
autoanalyser in around 5 minutes and get the same result
the kicker in this is that
solvent 3 was a saturated solution of
sodium or potassium cyanide
and when a sample bottle fell off a trolley
people were told
don't let any dogs lick your boots
when you get home tonight
so Ricker remembered the trendy term
intern
an actual intern is a junior doctor who
lives in the hospital - sleeps in an office on a ward
so that he can be woken to attend any
overnight or weekend emergencies
and the same can be said of nurses living in
the nurses' home - on site
town end near Marton Road at James Cook
a real intern isn't unpaid
they just never get to go home
until they get promoted
and somebody else becomes the intern



so far as we can tell the following are
total numbers of confirmed cases of
the 2019 corona virus from the start of testing to 22 July 2020
total followed by number per 100,000 people
total followed by number per 100,000 people
Redcar and Cleveland 705 515.7 23rd Juy no change
Middlesbrough 963 685.2
Stockton on Tees 970 491.9 23rd July 971
Hartlepool 22nd July 600 643 23rd July 604
Darlington 606 568.7 23rd July no change
County Durham 3338 633.4 23rd July 3340
Sunderland 1,777 640 23rd July 1,778
North Yorkshire 2,545 414.9 23rd July 2,547
Surrey Heath 433 487 23rd July 434
Redcar and Cleveland 705 515.7
Middlesbrough 963 685.2
Stockton on Tees 970 491.9
Hartlepool 600 643
Darlington 606 568.7
County Durham 3338 633.4
Sunderland 1,777 640
North Yorkshire 2,545 414.9
Surrey Heath 433 487
that, incidentally translates to a population of
Middlesbrough 140,500
Redcar and Cleveland 136,700
Stockton on Tees 197,100
Hartlepool 93,300
so far as we can tell this reflects more on
people's willingness to get tested than on
infection rates
no figures here for negative test results
at some time this year
705 of the 136,700 people in Redcar and Cleveland
got a positive test result
if we say 90 per cent of people only have the disease for
two to three weeks
at any given moment - on average
35 people in Redcar and Cleveland
had active disease
however it is much more likely that
at the height of the crisis
around 100 people were carrying the virus and
today - almost none
and the problem was and is no worse in
Middlesbrough or Hartlepool than in
Surrey Heath where the London commuters live
Surry Heath is essentially Camberley
will the last person to
attend a funeral in Hartlepool
please turn the lights out
does less than 100,000 people qualify as a town?


It's sheer jealousy you know but out Ricker reckons
Helen Stanley's world fell apart when the team went to the states and
she met Partridge's family
if Ricker had a glamorous assistant....
we have a couple more H.L.Menken quotes
misogynist
man who hates women as much as
women hate each other
and
this one is Voltaire not Menken
Medicine
Amusing - distracting - the patient
whilst nature cures the disease
this is very important because
through the second half of the 20th century
in the NHS in the UK
there was a culture of
a pill for every ill
the concept that the drugs were doing all the work
and no consideration need be paid to
synergy
the treatment and the natural resources of the patient
working in concert
to achieve the best possible result
the idea was
fling endless options at
lab rats
and
voluteer patients
and licence the ones that do the least harm
and this is linked to the saying
the operation was a success but the patient died
that still applies to cancer surgery
the surgeon measures success in terms of
histology reports that
show adequate margins
did we get it all out?
not did we do unsurvivable damage?
may cancer surgeons have a personal relationship with
the tumour
not
the patient
anthropomorphising the tumour or the infection
dismissing the patient as
just another one of the
little people


our Ricker is fired up, motivated by
spurious health advice on TV
on free to view terrestrial TV
there is this issue about white
if a product is white
over the ages it has had one of three things added
1 lead oxide
2 zinc oxide
3 titanium dioxide
lean oxide is toxic and banned for mere whitening
zinc oxide is in all sorts of skin creams and is
broadly fine but not in food
titanium dioxide is the
new thing but so far no problems have emerged
the problem here is about
galvanised metal, iron and steel
galvanised metal is dipped in molten zinc
and forms a layer that is effectively
a sacrificial anode
it get corroded in preference to the steel
and corrosion has to get past the zinc to get to the steel
if you heat galvanised metal you may vapourise the zinc
the effect is a bit like breathing in irritant but not highly toxic
you need zinc in your diet so after a day or two
the body will make proper use of the zinc delivered
in an inappropriate way
this is perhaps an old fashioned and expensive way to
protect steel
it is very random in terms of coating thickness
you can put an much thinner and more comprehensive layer of
zinc onto metal by
zinc plating
it is a common characteristic of
electroplating processes that
cyanide based solutions play a part
they are thoroughly washed off in the process being
very soluble in water
we say
don't let your kids suck and chew paintwork over 50 years old
because there is likely to be lead in the paint
we don't say
don't let your kids put anything shinny in their mouths
we do say don't let them swallow batteries
your silver and gold plated cutlery is perfectly safe
because any cyanide involved in the plating process is long gone
so it irks our Ricker when
car shows on TV say
don't grind or weld
galvanised metal components
but don't say
don't grind or weld chrome plated components
galvanising has nothing to do with cyanide
all fumes should be avoided
but not on grounds of cyanide presence

20th July 2020

we want to address a couple of concepts relating to
slavery
You probably don't remember
Old Big 'ed
managed some club in the East Midlands
played for Boro
Brian Clough
he had a cousin called
Jack Clough
Jack Clough was in the military
Jack Clough was a project manager in
petroleum and petrochemical plant installation
Jack Clough had a private pilot's licence
Jack Clough was in the SBS
Special Boat Squadron or Section
that
is the SAS on steroids
Jack Clough was shot by the Yanks
'Friendly Fire'
they transfused nine pints of blood into him to keep him alive
Jack Clough had two sons
one was Michael we could check the other one's name
Michael was OK
did things like going to Germany to sell welders
The other one
let's guess he was called David
anyway the other one wanted to
follow in his father's footsteps so he
got into training to be a para
member of the Parachute Regiment
no bother getting accepted onto the course
knowing who his father was...
trouble was
on his final assessment
a parachute jump
he screwed up
landed badly
broke his ankle
not gonna be a para
he point in being in the army then
The army had trained him
sooo
time to
buy himself out of the army
pay compensation to the army for their loss of a trained recruit
we think that no longer happens
but it did back then slave owners
when they had to give them their freedom

we can argue about the definition of a bolt
and a screw
a bolt has a nut
a screw has no nut
either or both of them can have a washer
these days people probably don't think about
the employment contracts of the people who
built the railways
they were called
navvies
because they were the same people who had built
the canals - the navigations
people these days have probably never heard the term
paid in washers
the navvies who built the railways
were paid in tokens that
could only be spent in
company shops
they were not paid in
legal tender
real money
and so by the definition of current protesters
they were slaves
and they were
for the most part
Irish
or Polish







where to start?
there is a difference between
a dysfunctional standard family upbringing
and
an unconventional upbringing
you can think
a professional who had a challenging childhood
will have empathy with messed up kids
the problem is
neither party is any sort of expert on
normal
take two girls
let's call the first one Janet
let's say she starts out OK
in some dead and alive hole such as Hull
and she was born in 1942
it goes OK for a while
then her mom gets sick
she has kidney failure
modern medicine comes to the rescue
sort of
she gets dialysis
she stays alive
for a while
until
the hospital run out of places to
make fistulas
all the veins she could have used
had used to take the blood out and put it back
had collapsed
and
transplants were not on the horizon
she died
and Janet had been old enough to get involved in the whole tragedy
and then she is a teenager with only a dad to rely on
and without malice he could struggle with a
teenage daughter in the UK in the mid 1950s
if you smart enough to get to uni in the late 50s early 60s
you smart
if you feel motivated by your mother's fate to study biology
fine
if you take a job teaching biology in a grammar school in Eston
right under the shadow of South Bank Steelworks...
that's getting iffy
then your grammar is closed and you are re assigned to an
11 to 16 comp in the same building...
trouble
then
then you think
I'm gonna tackle these morons
one at a time
not by the classroom full
I'm gonna be a
social worker
Heavens to Betsy
so by the time you get to having a granddaughter
oh by the way you left your husband and the kids and
bought your own house in
Stokesley
by the time you have a granddaughter who takes after you and
she goe one step beyond and becomes
a probation officer!!!!
what we have here is a system that prizes
empathy
and not effective role models
it's basically
keep a lid on it
rather than fix it
and then there is girl number 2
in a sense she has the opposite problem
her mom is a single mother
but her father is not exactly dead
he's just married
to somebody else
not her mom
and here is a specific difficulty
let's say she was born in 1962
let's say she's called Tania
and she gets to university too
and perhaps, just to add a side issue
let's say dad's legitimate kids don't get to uni
once she graduates
dad may start to think
perhaps I should have gone through all that
divorce and re-marry stuff but
those were the days
Church of England wouldn't have had that
but this does present a problem
you have a father who
doesn't really know his graduate daughter at all
he feels a sense of
ownership
and a sense of duty to protect
but he has no love
or even empathy
for his child
and he regards her as precious
but has no idea of what she wants or needs
and if he's a copper
nobody is going to argue with him
about anything




we are going to continue to nibble at the
sugar and rum trade
The Indian indenture system was
a system of indentured servitude
by which
2 million Indians
South Asian types
were transported to labour in
European colonies as a substitute for
slave labour
following the abolition of the trade in
the early 19th century
naturally this system was diverse but in essence
the men involved were required to
swear before a magistrate that they were going
voluntarily
and they were paid
eleven cents a month
thus evading the charge that this was
slavery
in the legal sense
we are gonna free-style it a bit from here
in the UK as elsewhere
through long tradition
people - mostly boys at pre-teen age
signed indentures to be
apprenticed to a master
they would work
think of famous European painters...
and people making cart wheels
and brewing beer
they would sign up to work for a master
for free
for seven years
in exchange for learning the master's trade
very recently in the UK these sorts of
job placements
were outlawed
we forget the trendy term for them
we now have all sorts of apprenticeships
some very short
presumably now on living wage
here's the thing
when indentured for a trade
you are working for the seven years
without pay but with
expenses
like there's a dormitory where the
apprentice jockeys sleep
and their food and tack are provided by the master
in the case of the Indian indentured labourers
they agreed to work for free or the 11 cents pocket money
in exchange for something else
mainly
1 release from a debt
2 transportation to a place they would rather be
we do want to say that the 'slaves' on the sugar plantation
had help
the main power provision was from
four legged associates
we know not, horse, mule, cattle
they were supervised by a small number of
white overseers - including security
around 6 security guards per island
we bring you now to the present day - for a moment
a lot of people are familiar with the
semi-comic detective series
Death in Paradise
it takes around six months of location shooting to make each series
most main actors can only stick it for around three series
half the year stuck in the middle of nowhere
the main point about being a slave in the West Indies was
so much time on your hands waiting for the crop to grow
and nowhere to go
and the real kicker was
even if you did get permission to leave
the ships all went to
England
you would have to go to England
not Africa
if you left
some did
we know of nobody who went to England and then
went on to Africa
and so
everybody being somewhat
stir crazy
tensions ran high and
for a time
the people with the weapons
were slaves - machetes
security - guns
violence was high on the agenda
it didn't mean that
the white people were immune from slaughter in
slave rebellions
we could say
without much hope of being believed..
The sugar plantations in the West Indies were
set up by the Dutch
and run repressively by them
and they gave up
and switched to beet sugar
and the British took over and kept the industry going
in a much more British way
until the First World War spoiled the party





we have another Menken quote
Puritanism
the haunting fear that
someone somewhere
may be happy
we have a
G K Chesterton quote
we will adapt it for the modern world
Police officer
A person who pours righteous indignation into
the wrong things
in the original it was
Puritan



H L Menken
was an American writer and journalist
1898 to 1956
in some ways most famous for a series of books about
American English
the language
not so much the ethnic group
He titled the series
The American Language
he was generally regarded as
anti-Semitic and racist
and he was to some extent famous for his coverage of the
Scopes Trial
The Monkey Trial
the trial of a schoolmaster for teaching evolution
and
his wife, Sara Haart, had been an advocate of
the 19th amendment
to the United States Constitution
up until 1776 many of the colonies in what would become
The United States of America
allowed woman to vote
in America in 1807
every state in the United States adopted a constitution that
denied the vote to women
they got it eventually
but one failed attempt to grant it was
the proposed but not ratified
19th amendment
just another example of
colonial life being somewhat more Liberal
than commonly portrayed
anyway we are just getting our context in
before quoting Menkin
we have this current Menkin quote

Hygiene is
The corruption of medicine by morality
kinda sums up what we have been saying just lately



three phrases come to mind for the present situation
blow the froth off the top of the coffee
taking in each other's washing
shall I be mother?
young people these days seem to see
taking on a job in the
service sector
as
getting paid for being sociable
in the works canteen
without actually setting foot on the shop floor
pressure to
have a job
results in people doing for each other
things they could do for themselves
the downside is that
instead of doing these things for
somebody down the street
they are commuting huge distances to
seek these services
if father is home, working from home
he may - the sexist swine
call out
any coffee on the go?
if he's
at work at work
either he has to walk to the
bistro on the corner
or
have deliveroo
deliver his coffee to his desk
what is missed here is that
how shall we say
if the worker's work consists of
sub-contracting a manufacturing order to
'China'
remember?
all the tea in China
and most of it is grown in
India and other South and South East Asian countries
either that item will be made in a
sweat shop in Leicester
or in a
highly robotised, hi tech facility in
China or Japan
people are 'put off'
'real work'
by the image of the persistent
British sweat shops
but we see a glimmer of hope
children of the 1950s were inspired by
replacing filthy coal and oil with
'clean(er)' nuclear and gas
what we see is despite the children of the 70s
switching to
really clean
desk top and lap top computers
children of the 21st century
are
during lock down
at the beginning anyway
into a vision of
modern manufacturing
by making PPE
personal protective equipment
using
3D printers
never mind free tablets for underprivileged children
get the 3D printers and laser cutters into class rooms and youth clubs
what about
sports clubs where
the geeks don't just
keep score
but design and make the
sports equipment?
and
replace
today children we will be exploring options for
working out how many beans make five
when the battery dies on our 'phones
with
today children
we won't just be putting your pictures aside to dry
we will feed your files into the printer to
produce trainer uppers or face shields to your design
overnight



we do find it easy to imagine our UK
Prime Minister
with a mental age of six
so we enter that wonderfully imaginative world
and explore the concept of
hand washing
when our Ricker was seven and attending his sister's wedding
he was trying to be awfully grown up in his posh togs
and he tried to shake hands with the vicar
and offered his left hand
and the vicar shook it with his left hand
there are cultures where that would be very
offensive in adults
the theory is
you shake hands with the hand you DON'T use
to wipe your bum
but we want to explore the distinction between
handshakes and fist bumps
we imagine the six or seven year old
and we think
most of them have heard of
elephants
when Ricker was six he knew he could breathe
in and out through his nose
but whilst poking it
he couldn't figure out
why there wasn't a hole in the middle
it does tend to thoughts of magic
even a six year old Prime Minister
knows that elephants are very good at football
with a big enough ball
but they put their food into their mouths
using the trunks
and their trunks are their noses
perhaps to the six year old PM
human arms and hands are like
elephant trunks
and
we
breathe in and out through our palms
and not the backs of our hands
perhaps if our
Infant Hercules
Prime Minister
attains the mental age of 12
he will figure out that
noses are for
breathing AND smelling
here may lie the confusion
it is said
by some
that if you wear gloves
whilst peeling and chopping onions
you cry less
who is to say that
there are not
nose type smell sensitive nerve endings
in the finger tips
that could pick up a virus?
the wonderful world of Desilu
the guy Desi Arnaz??
the woman
Lucille Ball
the classic sketch
in the department store
climbing into the fridge
to check that the light goes out
when the door is shut
never take anybody's word for anything
The All American Way
Desilu defunct 1968

14th July 2020

we remembered, we remembered

funny how you always remember right at the end
reference to a 70s chocolate bar add where the puppet
eats the whole bar before he
remembers what it's called

it's called
vaginismus
involuntary muscle spasm that interferes
with vaginal intercourse or other penetration of the vagina
also when you can't get the speculum into the vagina
to do the smear test
and in extreme cases
can't get a tampon in and need to use pads



we want to make a point here about the way
law enforcement
take scientific medical advice
and turn it on its head
to take the medical opinion first
we won't bother with the name of the drug
it has been described as an
oral pregnancy test
it came before
the most sophisticated bit of technology
you will ever deliberately piss on
the home pregnancy test
that wasn't the point of the drug
the point of the drug
the scientific point of the drug is a
condition called
amenorrhea
absence of menstruation
scientifically
the idea was
is the patient really pregnant?
medically you don't have periods
if you are male
if you are a little girl
if you are past the menopause
if you are pregnant
if you have certain disorders, illnesses
anorexia is the most common disorder suppressing periods
in the days when this drug was prescribed
anorexia was not on most people's RADAR
the scientific idea was
if you are of an age when you should be having periods
and you are not and you are not pregnant
a little nudge will bring on the period
the downside - scientifically - is that if you are pregnant
and a scientist in those days would imagine that
a woman not expecting to be pregnant
would have self selected for this treatment by 'knowing'
that she had not had unprotected sex in the past few months
perhaps too much to ask
medics mistaking
why have my periods gone
for
am I pregnant
may bear some responsibility for the problems that ensued
the essence is
if somebody is pregnant
and the pregnancy is in the
developmental phase
the early phase
and not the
growth phase
the second and third trimesters - thirds
even the slightest invitation to produce a period
will hold the prospect of causing damage to
the link or bond between
the womb wall and the placenta - later the afterbirth
and in the early stages of pregnancy this could interrupt
development of bodily features
from the scientific - drug company - point of view
you don't do this test unless you
KNOW
you are not pregnant
these days if you are female and of child bearing age
you can't even get an X-ray
without giving a negative pregnancy test first
times change
where we get into the
misinterpretation of scientific advice by
law makers and law enforcement
is who should be expected to have periods
to quote from the book of words
Delayed menses should be evaluated if
a girl shows no signs of puberty
by age 13
and menarche has not occurred by age 16
or if five years have passed without menarche
since the onset of puberty
end quote
also if you go 3 months without a period
or have less than 9 periods a year
here's the legal slight of hand
a female should be ready for sex
NO LATER THAN her 16th birthday
and the law says a female should not have sex
BEFORE her sixteenth birthday
AND
the law picks up in the age 13 bit too
it makes se with a female under 13
a more serious offence
like the lawyers overheard 13 and 16
from the row behind in the cinema
and made up their own minds about their significance
speaking of which
we were mentioning
heavy petting in the cinema
we forgot to mention that
the back row of the
Palace Cinema on Redcar sea front
now replaced by
the Palace Hub
had special double seats on the back row
expressly for the purpose
this presents two major defects in a
lazy
one size fits all set of laws that are
mandatory not advisory
and like many unreasonable pieces of legislation
in the spirit of
the darkest hour is just before dawn
the more unreasonable a law is seen to be
the more extreme the penalties that are introduced
tak out a Jenga block and anarchy...
a couple including a female under 16 are seen as
deliberately setting out to send the whole of humanity
to eternal damnation
and the punishment reflects that and not the sex
on the other hand females over 16 are not protected from the
what's wrong with you? accusation
these days
as opposed to say 40 years ago in the UK
we don't hear the word
fridgid - ever
we do forget the term but
there is this story about a couple found dead on Redcar Stray
early one morning
because in her fright
the female had gripped the male's todger so hard
they could not separate
and died of exposure
it goes with the myth of the
vagina with teeth that chops of todgers
we have previously made mention of
being
dry humped
as a definition for rape to avoid all those arguments about
consent
but being clamped so tight shut that no mortal man could get in...
it's gotta leave a mark



a major problem is one of scale
if you are Tommy Trump
and you live in Coronation Street
in Manchester
and you keep a pig in the back yard
you are considered to be
well worse that the bloke at the end of the street
who runs a fish and chip shop
that smells of rotten fish
a pernicious trade
subject to local authority supervision
back in the day
if you own a country house
you will be in line to be bought up by
the National Trust
if you have
a Home Farm
complete with pig styes
and a fish pond
it's a matter of scale
and so long as 'people'
the media
regard 'Redcar' as a
little sister to the cute fishing village of
Staithes
the steel works will seem like a
monstrous carbuncle on the face of a beloved friend
last month a USAF pilot ditched in the North Sea
he did not survive, condolences
the thing is he set off from Lincolnshire
and landed in the sea quite a long way off
Hull
and yet early press report were that
he had crashed near
Middlesbrough
in the minds of hacks there are only
fifty towns in the UK
and they all have Premiership or Championship
football clubs
we do recall the story that there are no football clubs
in Scotland's Premiership that
have a stadium of the same name
Celtic - Glasgow
Rangers -Glasgow
it may not be quite true but as examples
Ross County, St. Mirren, St Jonstone
Queen of the South, Partic Thistle,
would the Scottish media say
a helicopter crashed onto the roof of
the Clutha club
near Celtic
they probably would
it probably reflects a reality that
lots of people get into journalism
through sports journalism
through keeping score at cricket matches
and writing about football matches from the
side lines for the school magazine
or web page
what constitutes a town
we have heard of
Kirkleatham and Eston
variously described as
near Middlesbrough or near Redcar
when it comes to London
all we gets is
North London, West London, East London
Lord Sakes yesterday we actually got
in Bow, East London
orwas it
Bromley by Bow
or was it Bromley in Kent?
we recall the footballer who missed an match because
he put Stamford Bridge
into his sat nav
and ended up in Stamford Bridge
not Chelsea
if you are interested...
the crane collapse in Bow
somebody decided that
the crane didn't need its counterweights
whilst it was being erected
was leaving them until
they actually started lifting loads
this was a special type of crane
ir can be more lightweight because
it does not have a
jib
at an angle
but a vertical tower and a
traveller
so the forces ar taking two sides of a triangle
so that a swinging jib is not involved and all the
slewing occurs way above any surrounding structures
we have one working on the
Mo Mowlam centre on Corporation Road, Redcar this summer
but the horizontal traveller or arm is a load on the crane from the
get go
and the counter weights must be in place before the traveller goes out
incidentally
the origin of the word jib is that it is the name of the
sail
that is the ground or in-fill of the triangle and so
the use of jib in crane speak probably comes from
jib spar
the pole that holds the jib sail up
speaking of place names
the police
not having any staff in North Yorkshire.....
quite an important road runs through
Chop Yat
the police could never find it because it's
on the maps as
Chop Gate
locals told the change the name
would never happen in Wales
incidentally
back in the days of black and white TV
sorry monochrome TV
North Yorkshire used to get the
Welsh regional opt outs
near enough for government work
the transmitter is called
Billsdale
and on Teeside
TV aerials point in opposite directions
because...
we get equally rubbish reception from both
Bilsdale
and
Pontop Pike
little place, Teesside
only got the one rubbish football club
doesn't need its own TV transmitter
Pontop Pike
312 meters of pike - hill
and 149 metres of tower
between Stanley and Consett
opened 1953
Billsdale
mast height 314 metres
built 1969
essentially, properties that
got TV
before 1969 have aerials pointing north
and properties that got TV after 1969
have aerials pointing south
Billsdale is a
guyed steel tube
so we assume there is a lift inside
it's on the top of
Bilsdale West Moor
nearer to Chop Yat than
Hemsley
Helmesley
the B1257 runs in the bottom of the vale of the Seph
and that dvides Bilsdale West Moor from
Bilsdale East Moor
we don't have the spot height for Bilsdale East moor
or the base of Bilsdale transmitter
but it was probably chosen as a high point and
400 metres above sea level is typical in those parts
it's effin' enormous but apparently
not always run at full power
what we want to know is
what happened to
Burnhope TV transmitter
Burnhope was set up to provide
ITV independent TV
in the North East of England
but now it doesn't
it's a DAB only transmitter
digital audio broadcasting


what we are getting at is
The Big Blast in Redcar was built in the
1970s
when it was built and commissioned
it made
South Bank steel works redundant
soon after only the
coke ovens, the offices, and the
BOS plant remained
the blast furnaces had gone
South Bank coke ovens remain
Lackenby BOS plant remains
Basic Oxygen Steelmaker
basic as in alkaline - not acidic
not bog standard
they get the ph up by adding limestone
we not very sure but we think it was the
Ineos chap who turned down the chance to
build replica Land Rovers on the site
because
'there's nothing there but a muddy field'
that tends to be the way with development sites
see, he's used to buying up redundant
but working plant
such as his recent purchase of all of
BP's petrochemical plants
here we go...
you can separate crude oil into things such as
petrol (gasoline)
diesel
heating and aviation fuel
and you are left with
something more waxy
the stuff
Sabic
SBIC
the Sa bit being
Saudi Arabian
use the Olefin 6 plant at Wilton, Redcar
to crack down into smaller lighter
chemical intermediates
raw materials for the likes of plastics
if you are bp and you are transitioning from
British Petroleum
British so the Obama administration reckoned they should
pay for the refurb of the Southern coastal states of the US
despite the oil spill being created by a US sub contractor
we digress
if you are bp and you want to transition from
British Petroleum
to
Beyond Petroleum
you won't be processing crude oil
and you won't have
waxy, varnishy stuff to dispose of
hence
ditch petroleum - ditch petrochemicals
and the tail starts to wag the dog
we need the petrochemicals to make the likes of plastics
we don't need the lighter stuff because we've gone
electric or hydrogen
The Ineos guy decided to walk into a disused car plant
in South Wales
we don't know how that went
as of now
Redcar and Cleveland Council
not
Up the Boro council
are considering a planning application to use that
muddy field to build
wind turbines



we know that we are kinda
in the vanguard in medical thinking
we are not entirely dismissive of the
conflict in the minds of young people
particularly of, shall we say
AME rather than BAME background
trying to reconcile their religion and their
professional training
if they are of less than top notch intellect
they will tend to see their
professional routine as pretty much the same thing as
a religious ritual
for those with 'a religion'
it can be a bit like a Jenga Tower
disprove one element of their faith
and their whole faith and compass in life
disintegrates
a lot of medical professionals expect to leave uni
with a professional routine that will stand by them
throughout their careers
and so the emails that change protocols
stress them out no end
for that class of medical practitioner...
there is a tendency to at least go along with
patient families' and patient communities'
concept that all illness is
a punishment from God
this becomes a sliding scale
you have a disease after having sex
having sex must be naughty
you have an illness after shaking hands
you must have neglected the hand washing ritual
you get ill after using
not that anybody does these days...
a telephone kiosk
soon after somebody else
you may have perfected the hover in public toilets
but you can't hole a 'phone conversation
whilst holding your breath
so how can you have upset God
to the extent that he visited a plague on you and
your household?
if you are told you can get very ill
simply by breathing in
air that somebody else breathed out
where's the crime in that?



It is sometimes difficult to grasp how
the speed of social and moral change varies across
social groups and institutions
for many people in authority
the mere fact of sending an email was regarded as
an act of sedition
Ricker remembers being asked by a
Probation Officer
do you realise that every time you
send me an email
I have to print it out and put the hard copy
into your file?
in broad terms
Watsonm Crick, Frankline and the other guy - Wilkins
settled the issue of the DNA structure in 1952
Frankline died a few years later
it was in 1962 that the survivors
Crick, Watson and Wilkins were awarded their
Nobel Prizes
for the work
nobody has ever fixed the fact that
Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded
to dead people
thye are supposed to designate
special people who can be turned to for advice
people whose future endeavours should be invested in
trouble is
ten years is an untypically short time from
discovery to award
so Nobel Laureates
tend to be a bit past it
defeating the point of the
no posthumous awards clause
to get to our point
we want to contrast
The Fifties
and the invention of the
Teenager
with the swinging Sixties
both are still - just about - within living memory
one quote - a song lyric - characterises the 50s
we're not checking when it was written
she's gonna have fun fun fun
'til her daddy takes the T bird away
it's a car a Thunderbird
throughout the fifties in wetern culture the
DNA story was gaining momentum
and in the Swinging Sixties
the availability of the
contraceptive pill
a vegan prescription, just to let you know
the contraceptive pill became the issue
but another quote for the fifties
probably not from a song but maybe from a movie
that shows the gulf between the fifties and the sixties is
after a session of heavy petting on the
back row of the movies
one young woman says to another
if he's broken through
I'll kill myself
not so much fear of
unwanted pregnancy
fear of
virginity loss
heavy petting categories
top outside
top inside
bottom outside
bottom inside
where was Ms Allred then?
perhaps not yet born

6th July 2020

from time to time we get irritated by
media output
and
are stirred to
state the bleeding obvious
so we will start with the not so obvious
in mid 18th century Silesia
the king of Prussia
subsidised experiments to improve the
extraction of sugar
in 1747 Andreas Marggraf
isolated sugar from
beetroots
here's a name from the 60s
'pop' group
The Wurzels
mangleworzles
beet
sugar beet
and....
Tate and Lyle
Tate Gallery
cane sugar - West Indies
British Sugar Corporation
mangleworzles - Lincolnshire
by 1914....
the sugar beet industry in the US
matched European production
California, Utah, Nebraska
in the US
beet sugar was produced in
World War 2
by
Interned Japanese
US beet sugar 11 states 55 per cent of sugar production
US cane sugar 4 states 45 per cent of sugar production
in short
people Tate and Lyle
who made vast sums from cane sugar did so
because
it wasn't until the country couldn't get
cane sugar imports during
The First World War
that the UK government allowed - promoted
beet sugar in the UK
cane sugar producers didn't
make their vast fortunes by
working Africans to death
as in abolitionist propaganda
but by exploiting their
monopoly of supply to
Brits who were and are
addicted to the stuff
the prices people were willing to pay for sugar
the workers could have had
enormous wages and the sellers would not have noticed
remember sugar cane...
plant grass
wait most of the year for it to grow
set fire to it
to burn off the dry bits with no sugar
and make chopping space
spend a month or two chopping it down
boil it up
stick it on a ship
repeat
that's a two month work year
plenty of time to recover
and perfect your singing
the 'slaves' on sugar plantations in the West Indies were
seasonal agricultural workers
but it was uneconomic to
return them to Africa in the
off season
their livilhood was protected by the
British Government's suppression of beet sugar in the UK



1611 King James Bible
Henry 8 - 1386 - 1422
1590 earliest record of a
compound microscope
a microscope using more than one lens in an optical path
and so
any observations of tiny things before 1590
Henry 8 but not James 2
would have been with a glorified
magnifying glass
Elizabeth 1st 1533 - 1603
we tend to think of
The Church of England
as a whacky marginal aberration founded by Henry 8
what we forget is that
before he fell off his horse
Henry was deeply involved with Rome
Elizabeth the 1st and Queen Mary were
daughters of Henry 8
here's a thing
if Elizabeth was Queen
she would by the conventions of the day
not have eggs
and therefore
could not have
legitimate heirs
married or not
it is very 21st century
to have
daughters fit into the royal line of succession
without quibble
we tend to think of the
King James Bible
as uniquely
British
but interpretations of scripture
which books to include and leave out etc.
would have been more shared across
Christendom
that may be imagined
in a sense there was - at the time
no point in Elizabeth 1 giving birth
because she would be handeing her throne to
her partners child not hers
and with no DNA back then
which bloke's kid gets the crown?
but there is a different angle here
since
see below
people in Tudor Times
believed that
first mating sealed the deal in terms of
the genetics of all future children
we are cast back to the writings about
The Mother of John The Baptist
considered
barren
but then found not to be
maybe she
had sex once
nothing happened
she gave up
until much later
it's a thought


and so we come to the
Twins Sam
the curate's wife gives birth
and he - oh the day when clergy were male
says
but I was naughty twice vicar
the opposite concept
each and every penetration leads to a birth



we're writing about this as though it's
ancient history
but
there appears to have been a
paradigm shift
between Ricker born in the 1950s
and his half brothers born in the 1920s
men born up to the twenties or thirties
seemed to think that
any bloke with
good bloodlines
could knock decent kids out of
anything with tits
that shift in opinion probably came with
Watson,Crick, Wlkins, Frankline
we say Watson and Crick but
if it weren't for
Watson - Yank, Crick - Brit
it would probably have always been the other way around
anyway
that book
The Double Helix
probably laid the foundations for a
meaningful sort of
wimin's lib
a genuine
female emancipation that
BAME people will not have the same
groundwork for
what BAME people need to work on is
a reputation for being
chilled
our Ricker knows his limitations
he has no idea who
Tom Marvolo Riddle
was
he was
Lord Voldemort
and so
the
first Austrian Grand Prix of 2020
was a
Voldemort themed fancy dress party
The next few months will be a
Jobsworths' Jamboree
all sorts of regulations will be introduced so that
they can be relaxed
a couple of weeks later
what fun
speaking of characters from the past...
we, Ricker, recognises that most people don't
get
references to Douglas Adams and
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
at the start of the series
Earth is designated
Harmless
at the end it has changed to
Mostly Harmless
the great selling point of the guide is that
the front cover is dominated by the words
Don't Panic
strange when all UK journalistic wisdom would say
to sell newspapers you need to
tell the casual observer that
there is something new to panic over
as a TV series and as a movie
Hitchhiker's is a quest
The quest is to find the answer to the ultimate question
of
Life, The Universe and Everything
there are three computer characters in the series
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Brain the size of a planet
of which more later
brain the size of a planet and they
ask me to open a door
the second computer is
Deep Thought
in the BBC television series it is represented as the
Shell - or is it BP? - building
near the National Theatre
it is set the task of telling people the answer to the question
Life, the Universe and Everything
for our point we have to spoli the surprise
the answer Deep Thought gives is
42
referring to Marvin's brain size
turns out the mice
as in
ah the plans of mice and men
do often gang astray
what have men got to do with it?
ask the mice
the mice
have commissioned
Slartybartfarst's company to
build
The Earth 2
to replace
The Earth
and both were intended as computers to answer the ultimate question
we will make an aside about
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
it's a pop-up restaurant
set up so people can dine whilst
observing
the end of the universe
a time and event
not place
the point is
if you ask a
digital
computer to answer a question
its answer will be a number
whether it's 42
or pie to six million decimal places
and so with health difficulties
computers...
garbage in - garbage out
but more significantly
numbers in - numbers out
we picked out a statistic - unverified as they say
first month of lockdown in UK
16 women and children killed in locked down homes
one mother and her three children were the
victims of one incident
so we could say
no more than 13 incidents of
lockdown man on women and children homicide
no more than 13 men
lost it to lethal effect
normal non-lockdown monthly average...
8
percentage wise significant and all tragic
but not the
mass slaughter as advertised
over the past five years
we have seen around a dozen
terrorism related homicides
and one
white man retaliatory attack
Finsbury Park
and that white man was
Welsh
we do seem to be quite chilled as a nation
and too keen to give too much of a platform to
people who are too close to the
pockets of paranoia

in these days of
electronic program(me) guides
it is not easy for a reviewer to
as the old time radio disc jockeys would have said
back announce
an item
The Yesterday channel recently re-ran a series on
the private lives of (British) monarchs
and the last one was Henry the eighth
it was fronted by the chief curator of the British Royal Palaces
we lighted on one comment she made
she said some people in Tudor times - the days of Henry 8th
had an idea that
every time a man had sex he shortened his life by one year
Henry died at 44
another idea was that depite marrying her
Henry never had sex with
Ann of Cleaves
it conjures up in the mind the concept of
people the likes of Henry 8th
only ever having sex on their
wedding night
and if it didn't do the trick...
next wife
Henry couldn't get a male heir
makes you wonder how hard he tried
what he thought was actually involved
like
I piss on this lamp post once
and it is for ever mine?
lock her up in a tower and
every time she comes on heat
one of her husband's sperm will develop
before there were microscopes
or perhaps just as they became available and were
still rubbish
at least one drawing emerged of the
humanculus
preformationism
asserted to be trapped inside each sperm
a humanculus being a tiny fully formed baby
wikipaedia reference
homunculus
here is the difference
every little girl is born with all the eggs she will ever have
many never develop but they can be counted
boys MAKE sperm
they bud them off from mother cells
sperm count and quality can be affected by
environmental conditions
if we take two ideas
the late 20th century concet of the
fractal universe
p everything is made up of smaller and smaller versions of itself
and the concept of
preformationism
every boy has knackers full of
children hidden in sperm
and all the male sperm have
sperm in their knackers and
it's turtles all the way down
Terry Pratchet reference
what preformationism says is
everything that will ever exist
was created by God in his
six day week
it's just that a lot of it is at present so small
it can't yet be seen
but it may grow
it is based on
16th century alchemy
and
19th century science fiction
before he fell off his horse...
Henry 8 was very into
The Enlightenment
Alchemy and all that
there are species
where the female mates once
stores and nurtures masses of sperm
and doles them out as she produces eggs
perhaps the royal physicians had been studying
bees
and this fits in with this concept of
a husband and his mother insisting that the bride
be virgo intacta
groom's mother inspects the bride
and hands her the white dress in which to walk down the aisle
style

6th July 2020

according to paypal
nobody, absolutely nobody
has donated one thin dime
to the support of this web site
that is interesting

as a planet
we are suffering a bit of a setback
but in the UK
for some at least
it's back to
onwards and upwards

29th June 2020

we are going to explore the issues around the
Smallman case
we start from the concept that two women are
reported to the police as missing
the first allegation is that the police took an
oh they'll turn uo
dead or alive
initial attitude
to the case
this in itself begs the question
did the police know
right from the outset
that these were women of colour?
was t just a case of
oh just another missing persons case
or was it
oh God not THEM again
were the Smallmans
known to the police?
and then the family find the
victims and the murder weapon
we would guess that in the majority of murders
we've found a body
is the gist of the initial report to police
it is not very clear that
a prior missing persons report
automatically dictates that
the police should find the body first
we would guess that very rarely are
police eyes the first to light on the
body of a murder victim after death
we have a point to make about how this will play out
we are wondering how much of this will be divulged
we are wondering = in this modern age
what sort of police officers would you set to stand over
female dead bodies whilst SOCO arrived
scenes of Crime Officers
what chance
female victims - female guardians
plenty of low ranking female officers around in London
if the unofficial pics were taken by female officers
that will be clear because the issue is
not the taking but the publishing of these images
that is at question
and that brings us to the question of
automatic victimhood for females
and we will refer readers to the
bed bath scene
in
Christy Brown's
My Left Foot
the title of this autobiography relates to a chap
who had control of his left foot
and nothing else
and the passage relates to a group of
female nurses
turning his bed bath into
personal, group, entertainment
essentially relating to the fact that
this stricken man despite having no
control over his body
was subject to 'normal' consequences of
sexual arousal


this being factual
brings to mind a fictional scene
the singer and entertainer
Sting
once played the part of a priest in a movie
in the essential scene his character is left alone with
a young woman who is comatose
and as a result of his doing what any
red blooded male would have done before
DNA was discovered
she is snapped out of her coma
we also have reports or stories of
father's visiting morgues to
identify their dead daughters
and discovering the attendants
having sex with their dead daughters' remains
the phrase there being
he prefers his meat cold
on at least one occasion the producers of
adult entertainment, looking for
a USP - unique selling point
have set up in a care home to make a movie about
women over 100 having sex
not a niche that gained much popularity
there is a sense of
she's not much use for anything
but at least the lads can have a bit of fun with her
if you can't sing, dance, cook, tell jokes
in a sense, no matter how disabled
you can
lie back and think of England
and it is not exactly clear why such people should be
reduced from
basically useless
to utterly useless
because what they can do is
sex related




we don't know the history of small local
furniture retailer
Barker and Stonehouse
they have some large stores now and they are
possibly not in the same ownership they were in
the mid 1980s
at around that time they left their
modest store on
Redcar High Street
and at least one of our Ricker's neighbours
still works for them
what we were getting to is that
for a little while the unit was occupied by a
gift shop
it may now be
KFC
but it was a long time ago
so knowing exactly is difficult
what we are getting to is a line of merchandise that
or a while was displayed in the gift shop window
it was essentially pink and it
featured a matchstick figure of a little girl
and the legend was
when I grow up
I'm gonna be a nurse
and see lots of men's
willies
as we sit here now
we consider when will the pendulum swing back
and what will
schoolgirl stationery feature in
twenty years' time?
in the UK in the 1960s
little children
with large families
children raised children
without much adult supervision
and little ones learned about
gender difference and sex by playing
doctors and nurses
albiet that the nurses were girls and the doctors were boys
and it was mainly about familiarising little boys with
girl bits
the standard was and now we have
sexting
and still we do not have adult supervision
but we do have
police surveillance
children use the internet to compensate for
the relative absence of siblings
brothers sisters cousins etc
we recall a BBC
play for today from the 1960s
about two men who had been at boarding school together
and they had very different memories of
night time wanderings into
matron's room
one had been in the habit of going there
for hug to help with his homesickness
the other had regularly gone there to
stiff the matron
at present we are somewhat adrift in these matters
but the two men in this play were regarding the same woman
very differently
and in conflict over it
say you are an important professional of
South Asian extraction
you are proud of your work role
your family think you need to be married
your family think you should have children
your family think that you should only ever have sex
in pursuit of children
and so
as soon as you have children
you should not
trouble
the lady wife
for more sex
and so what does she do
she - especially if she is not also a doctor
she switches from being your sex partner
to being
your feeder
and you become morbidly obese
we have mentioned
MILF
before
a MILF is a
Mom I'd like to fuck
a type of sex video focussing on the
'mild perversion'
the crazy thought
that even after she has produced all the children
she ever would want
a woman may still be
up for a seeing to
Ricker does not buy every book he looks at in a shop
he remembers a memoir of a
vice squad policeman
in one section the copper recounts his arrest of a man who
had a girlfriend who had a daughter who was not his daughter
and this chap had got into the habit of visiting his step daughter
on his way to bed
and chatting a bit and
fingering her
so he was getting nicked for having sex with a child
what we should say is
the girl protested that she did not want her step father locked up
the question is
how did the police find out about this activity?
we have to assume that the mother rang the police
we have to assume that the mother was happy to loose her boyfriend
we don't know whether they were living in his house of hers
perhaps she was willing to loose her home
and possibly have her daughter taken into care
just for the satisfaction of
ringing the police for a whinge
what is lacking is that initial sense of
shrug, the girl got fingered, so what?
from the police
and the reason is
process
no judgement
just process
and once the process begins
it no longer belongs to
victim, perp, or witnesses
it belongs to
law enforcement
and their question is not
how will this affect the parties?
their question is
how will this be reported in the media?
in a sense the media have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs
at one extreme
less people get married so that the media cannot
tag a relationship with
adultery
and so the media plough on
treating cases where none of the parties were married as
adultery any way
and the public don't give a click
but for the media and law enforcement
no matter how dry the well
in terms of public reaction
they still keep going there
like the old talk show host Sam
this letter has just flooded in
and these days
MPs
are the most senior talk show hosts
referencing constituency office eamils
as their authority to
try to vote down the Laws of Nature




we think we should explain what
cock a snook
means
cock a snook means
thumb your nose
just thought we'd clear that up



When our Ricker was at school
one of the lads in his year group was called
Dyer
Dyer was an OK guy if a bit
over confident
Dyer's claim to fame was that he was the only person we knew
this is a long long time ago
the only person we knew who had actually witnessed
people having sex
this bloke had been humping this woman in the street
outside Dyer's front door
in India
and this is where we are getting
Dyer in India
General Reginald Dyer
and the law of unintended consequences
first we will say that
when the suffragettes and suffragists were
rioting for votes for wimin
women had the vote
they could vote people - including other women -
on and off local councils
votes for women was about
women being entitled to vote in
Parliamentary Elections
and honestly that was coming whether or not
wimin smashed windows or starved themselves to death
being a suffragette was like being
a football hooligan supporting
Liverpool or Man City
not Bradford Park Avenue
the unintended consequence comes that in India
Indian men had fought and died in the
First World War
for the Empire
and didn't get the vote
the women had worked in munitions factories
and DID get the vote
no home rule for India
and so, bitter resentment
another liberation movement
The Indian National Congress
or
The Congress Party
got stroppy
April 1919 Congress announced
big meeting in
Amritsar in the Punjab
The State Governor arrested the two main speakers
cue rioting
five Europeans dead
and another thing
for some reason the rioters didn't roam the streets
they crammed into a walled courtyard
when the local military commander ordered the troops to
open fire...
nowhere to run to
500 dead
officially 379
and that was..
Richard Attenborough's 1982 film
Ghandi
and that movie became
the official history of
India in the British Empire
and there was a
Public Enquiry
and some people thought Dyer had
done the right thing
King George the fifth's
note the dumbing down here
we assume King George V's would flummox you
King George the fifth's deathbed scene is disputed
there is a town on the south coast of England called
Bognor
at some stage it became
Bognor Regis
because some king - possibly George V
went there a lot
on his death bed some flunky tried to cheer him up by
suggesting
maybe soon we can go to Bognor
King George V's famous last words
in 1936
were
Bugger Bognor
officially however they are recorded as
How goes the Empire?
if you are a Geordie you may 'get' this
just like
tsunami
becomes
toon army
we had Mohandas Gandhi
known as
Mahatma Ghandi
and so we have - well had
ma hat, ma ganzi
need those in inclement weather
Ghandi wanted home rule or independence but
he was a big stalled over whether
India should or should not be
A Muslim State
in essence
Ghandi was against partition
HE wanted an all India secular state
other people were more interested in
Partition
than
Independence
it all got very troubled when
The Labour
lost the 1931 General Election and
the National Government
scrapped The Labour's plans for Indian Independence
and then Ghandi got arrested again for
telling Indians not to fight for the Empire
in the Second World War
that has to be seem as
peevish
not as support for Hitler
remember
no you never knew
in 1933 the Oxford Union
University Debating Society
voted to
Not fight for King and Country
in 1935
11 million people signed
The Peace Ballot
we see things differently now...
in the 1930s
The British saw that
the outcome of the First World War
had been very - perhaps overly - harsh on Germany
in those days
people in the UK saw
Japan as doing
what they see China doing now
and
they didn't care much about
The Frozen North
and Germany
their main fear was that
Mussolini
Italy
would turf the Brits out of
Israel, Palestine, and Egypt
and close
The Suez Canal
to British Trade
all that stuff about
dame Vera Lynn
and Burma
the movies tell us that
the war in the East
didn't start until
Pearl Harbour
the Brits celebrated
V E Day
but their eyes were always firmly on
V J Day
victory over Japan
and in their hearts
the Brits abandoned
Hong Kong
the day
Enola Gay
dropped her gift on
Hiroshima
since we have the numbers to hand referring to Richardson asking,
on a first visit to Newcastle upon Tyne
where are all the bomb sites?
during the Blitz
18,800 tons of bombs landed on London
152 tons of bombs landed on Newcastle and Tyneside
there is a 'conspiracy theory' that
the Blitz was not designed to destroy British Industry
but to rid Britain of its slums
in preparation for a German take over
Glasgow and Liverpool - although ports - were the only
other target hit with over a thousand tons of bombs
apart from Plymouth - Devonport the British naval headquarters
tht got 1,228 tons
less thn Glasgow - 1,329
and far less than Liverpool- Birkenhead, 1,957
Sheffield 355 Birmingham 1,852
and in deference to their bombed cathedral
Coventry 818


There used to be, and possibly still is a thing called
Imphal Barracks
In 1944 when the Japanese
Invaded India
The British and Indian Armies defeated the Japanese
at the Battle of Imphal
Th Chinditz
were a specially trained unit
something between
the French Resistance and the SAS
who were British, Chinese and American
they landed behind Japanese lines and blew up bridges and such
remember
how little but ocean lies between japan and
the American seaboard - California etc.
where a lorra lorra ethnic Chinese lived and live

while we're on
relating to Redcar or Coatham
just to skip back a while
at some stage
Cleveland Golf Course
was cut in two - smaller half now abandoned
by a new link road from the Kirkleatham Lane railbridge
to the sea front
the road is called
Majuba Road

think of the movie
Zulu
The Zulu wiped out an entire British army column
at Isandhlwana
the British had guns
unlike at the Dardanells much later
but they couldn't get their ammunition boxes open
because
they had
brought the wrong spanners
The Zulu went on
no doubt chuckling themselves silly,
at attack a small base at
Rorke's drift
and the British were not
almost all Welsh as in the movie
and they did better
having found the appropriate spanner
Two years later
not facing
fuzzy wuzzies
facing Dutch Boer farmers
we are presuming boer is Dutch for farmer
British tactic - fusillade
let 'em 'av it boys
Boer tactic
sniper fire from rifles normally used for hunting
The Battle of Majuba Hill
The British were slaughtered
and those remaining
pulled out of
the Transvaal
as fast as they could run
and so
Majuba Road, Coatham, Redcar
is a War Memorial
Transvaal had diamonds and still has/
and it was Dutch, not British
British wanted it
here comes your
Liverpool FC reference...
The Dutch
got their retaliation in early
by attacking the British bits of South Africa
In 1899
at the battle of
Spion Kop
the Boers slaughtered the Highlanders
and cooped the British into
Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley
in time the numbers of British re-inforcements
won the day
but then we get to a
Genuine British Baddie
you seen those World War One posters?
Your Country Needs You
that guy is
General Kitchener
and it was his idea toherd all the
South African Dutch together
so they couldn't support and provision
Dutch Terrorists
and so he invented
The Concentration Camp
and they had some for
The Dutch
and some for
The Blacks
and they were as bad as the Nazi ones
except for the gas chambers
the inmates were left short of food
for fear they would pass it on to
the Partisans
The essence of the Spion Kop massacre was that
the Brits chose their
camp site, in completely alien territory
in thick mist
and were astounded to wake up next day
in the midst of the enemy
The British are characterised as
Lions lead by Donkeys
but over and over again
they get bailed out by their
Boffins

22nd June 2020

une 2020
There are times when people say
a bad workman
blames his tools
on the other hand
right tools, right materials
make the best job
our Ricker bought a couple of cameras
and some other kit
for himself from Cash Converters
for Christmas
and lockdown has rather suppressed his
learning
these pictures show that it is very likely that
the swans he wrote about just before lockdown
did actually nest and rear young in Locke Park

it's very easy to say that it was Ricker's lack of experience
with his 'new' kit that caused these pictures of a heron
to be of such 'poor quality'
they are however
very atmospheric
capturing the vital moments of
a heron catching fish
with thousands of pounds worth of kit
something for
Springwatch
may have been achieved
but to him these shots are
great







and this is dad off into the distance
chasing geese off his pond
and leaving the kids with mom





sometimes we can develop a misunderstanding
from other people's words
when a black person or a person of colour says
it is wrong that black history is not taught in schools
in countries with significant black minorities
we may interpret that as
hey look at me, I'm an important part of
this society too
but what if they are saying
I'm upset, I'm confused
because I don't know why things are as they are
the national education system has let me down by
leaving me ignorant and
in my amateur and immature way
flailing around trying to fit the pieces together
clearly the Romans and the Nazis did terrible things to
slaves
The Romans essentially bought slaves from
pirates
what may astonish some
Black rights activists is the story of this chap
called something like Pick
who had a statue in Washington DC
what almost nobody knows is that
this chap was based in the mid west
not the south
and he did something quite unexpected
from a modern perspective
he was recruited by the South
we think that's the Confederates
to try to link up with the
First Nations People
we guess in the mid west and the west
to join the Confederacy because
BECAUSE
First nations people
owned slaves
and his legal work was
helping first nations people sue the
Union Government
either to keep their slaves
or keep their lands
whooda thunk it
what we haven't figured out is
did Red Indians and Eskimos
have black African slaves
or did they enslave members of
other first nations tribes?
it seems to us that the whole point of
living on a reservation or in Alaska is
there are no laws
and so we had to get into the origins of
Indian
and here we get into
Sanskrit
in Sanskrit, sindhu is the word for river
Hindustan is a name applied to
the upper valley of the river Ganges in India
and Hindi is a language spoken in
northern India
which is a combination of
German and native Indian influences
and
caste
is one of the four traditional hereditary classes
into which society in India
is divided
does a young person of South Asian ancestry
living in the UK
and learning nothing of Indian History from
an objective state education source
assume that the caste system in India was invented by and imposed by
The Colonial British?
and here we come to the problem of
time
back in the day
if you were smart you did French
if you were thick
you did French Studies
and French Studies didn't involve any of
the lingo, just the culture, taught and examined in English
and then the fuck wits in Wales decided to
take up classroom time
teaching Welsh the Language
and not Welsh the culture
in all Welsh Schools
like teaching by
Rote learning
selections from a book about Islam
written a few thousand years ago
and again
not in English
even though
they will understand English in China and Brazil
but not Sanskrit
or Arabic
it's not English cultural colonialism
one third of English is Latin and one third Greek
and sod all is
Old or Middle English
English accepts the words as they originate from other languages
robot is English but it originates from Polish
so if you want a
a Welsh word for robot
you are not cocking a snook at English
but Polish
if you didn't have a word for robot
before the word was developed in Polish
then inventing an alternative word for robot is
not
protecting your cultural heritage
as with
put wood in t'oil
being a traditional cultural variation on
close the door
preserving traditional variation is
constructive
constructing a
Tower of Babel
is
racist
as in the arsehole creeping nonsense of
The French
insisting on referring to
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
as
OTAN
Organisation Treatysome of the Altlantic of the North
Cheese Eating Surrender Monkies
reference to De Gaul and the Free French
Marshall Petine was it?
Reject English but
surrender to the Germans
people don't choose their skin colour
but they do choose to become morbidly obese and
they do choose to take up their children's time
learning things - including languages - that are
not main stream
and then want?
extra marks in their main stream studies to
compensate for the time they have spent
polishing their cultural traditions
like
I should get extra marks if my exams are during
Ramadan because
the fasting makes me light headed




a couple of economic notes from Redcar
it sounds as though the oil cracker is
back on line after its 'overhaul'
and that is in line with the doubling of motor traffic
since the early days of lockdown
The leftists always want to
get their retaliation in early
pre-write their 'news' items
so for the hacks with all the stories about
Cash Converters
and prized X boxes being traded in to
put food on the table
we can report from
Redcar Cash Converters
that the first day of
non-essential shop opening was
a bit hectic
but the rest of the week was
'pretty quiet'




a few years ago our Ricker was on some sort of
web forum
he was mainly reading other people's stuff
but he did get into a few exchanges
he gave up after a while
he came away without a direct quote but
with the distinct impression that
if he'd studied something along the lines of
Hindi
and not French
he would have been a shew in for med school
as a society the UK
and we do doubt that the UK is a nation
it is more like a
venue
as such, despite this, whatever it is
it does seem to be
getting a bit ahead of itself
problem solving, done
the thing of the day is
sales, promotion, education
hence
doctors with
empathy
not
insight



Here's a little challenge to
BBC news editors, script writers
would you ever say
the child was separated to his mother
you would say
the child was separated from his mother
so why in God's Name
would you say
The Imperial study is separate TO the Oxford study
spit feathers ain't in it

at the same time we have a clarification to make
long long ago we published material about
not having patients sitting up because they drown in
their own saliva
we were giving public service advice for
normal people
at that time we did not know that the majority of
'working age' CoViD-19 patients are
morbidly obese
long ago, as opposed to long long ago
we explained why the morbidly obese have difficulty breathing
per se as they say
we did not link these items
for most people the failure to
achieve a productive cough
is their main risk
for the morbidly obese
CPAP or whatever it is
that keeps the patient conscious
not intubated and sitting up
allows that blubber to sink into their hips
and if they are conscious and not packed full of antosins
they will cough



we need to add something to comments
quite a lot lower down
relating to vaccines
we need to explain that
if you take the likes of
tobacco masaic virus
and tack on some element of
corona virus
there may be an initial surge of
helpful antibodies
what is much less likely is that
a human immune system will
take a tobacco plant virus
hostage
and use it to keep up its defences against
a corona virus
and this could explain why many
cobbled together
viccines have limited success
the ones that work well consist of
inactivated virus
not dummy virus
and the other point
to be of any use against a virus
the effort has to be
and extinction event
a global extinction event for the virus
not a long term expansion of human defences




in the sort of on-going series of
jottings from our Ricker's fractured memory
important moments
In Queen Street there are many houses
one in particular was
when Richer was at Primary School
his father not yet retired
but around the time Ricker had his
face kicked in
in the school playground
for
being too clever by half
this particular house was arranged with its
front room - downstairs
serving as a sweet shop
much like a part of Ricker's mum had had
a sweet shop in part of her home
when she was a little girl
and one day the shop shut
and then the
Get Wet announced that the man who had
helped his mam to run the shop
had been
kicked to death
and the Get Wet opined
what did he expect
living with his mam and running a sweet shop
any right thinking dad would kick him to death
this kind of
media stroke law enforcement
pandering to the brain dead
was naturally very influential on everybody
not just the slowly healing Ricker
as an aside
the media have had an ongoing struggle with their
one shared brain cell
over how to
calumniate
now Ricker recognises the word
calumnise
never seen it expressed as calumniate
calumny - false accusation, malicious slander
how to calumnise these people with this
new American import epithet
paedophile
without distressing the
newest darlings of the media
The Gays
in the public mind
gay men would want to recruit little boys to
adopt a gay life style
and any man who would volunteer to have the slightest
contact with children
was assumed to be
out to convert them into gays
here is the major conundrum
anybody viewing this issue from the outside
would say
we the British have always had our suspicions of
paedarasts
men who chose careers as teachers in
boys' prep schools
men who liked little boys
suddenly
The Americans thrust into the media mix
the concept of the paedophile
men who like the company of
children
liking little girls was added to the list of
traits not a part of a straight man's make-up
and at at this time we still see women
buying the idea that to snare a
real man
they have to install large lumps of silicone
under the skin of their chests
say you like big tits
only females over 18 have big tits
and the ones who don't should get
plastic - cosmetic - surgery
quite an enditement of
American insecurity over
gender identity
these days in the UK
broadly
any men working in
pre-teen education are employed to
protect the
wimin and childer
from any parents who show
male characteristics
and show up at the school gates
Ricker's local Primary
looks for all the world like a
cattle market
for all the layers and layers of
steelwork fences



today, however, ricker set out to write about
his mam
his mam and JK Rowling
for the most part, poles apart
but in 1915
George Robert and Eva Frank
were pregnant
and the little boy was
stillborn
and Eva was advised that the best wy forward was
to get pregnant again as soon as possible
and in 1916
Eva May was born
and she simply didn't have the plumbing to be
a worthwhile substitute for her dead
elder brother
and as she grew up matters were not helped by
the fact that her
boy substitute role was picked up on by her
school friends who didn't call her
Masie as her family did
but
Frankie
this is all very well
but the point we wanted to get to is
we don't know what Masie's elder brother was callled
and we don't know why he died
what we do know is that if this had allplayed out in
2015, not 1915
it is almost certain that un-named son
would have survived as a
special needs child
and George and Eva would have dedicated their lives
to his care
and never have 'tried for' another baby
being so overwhelmed with the task of caring for
their handicapped or disabled son
and so
through the 20th century we have
a phase where there are families invested in
daughters who
we think in Redcar of Gertrude Bell
are women who get opportunities in life that
were not afforded to women previously
because newly affluent middle class people
find themselves with
daughters and no sons
and make the best of it
and the best of it very often did not stretch to
'making a good marriage' for the girl
and then we see society
schools
randomly selecting girl pupils and
without any significant consultation with the family
fast tracking or shoe horning these girls
into medical school
and the like
and getting the shock of their lives when
at 14 they return from a
'holiday'
in the old country
married to some peasant labourer
three times their age who has
already worked three wives to death
we watched a TV show about
King Tut
The boy king of Egypt
it was fairly clear that his left leg thigh bone had
suffered a break at the growth plate
leg bones have interstitial and appositional growth
they grow in length from a plate near the end
massive overgrowth
and yet
in the face of the evidence that he had an
unsurvivable leg injury
and he had the most aggressive form of
malaria and he lived to the age of 19
the commentary had to say
because his mother and his aunt
were the same person
to died young from
in breeding
we do not
follow the science
if we followed the science
if we followed the science
many many women could have their dearest wish granted
they would want their early experiences of sex to be with
someone they trusted
not some stranger who was
available to marry them
or a 'good catch'
and the request
fuck me daddy!
could be routine and complied with
so when the
gay bashing slot
is removed from the media template
it has to be replaced with the
paedo bashing slot




what we find totally unacceptable is the case of
professional footballer Johnson
given five years because
on discovering that his new girlfriend was
a few weeks under age
decided not to have sex with her
what was in the brainless mind of the tril judge was
the lad had fathered a daughter by a previous
girlfriend and
decided not to marry and divorce the mother
thus giving his daughter child support
but not giving somebody else's daughter
the child's mother
half of his worldly wealth
it's all about the money
he got five years
not for not having sex with an underaged woman
but for declining to marry his daughter's mother
and fifty years ago...
how would anybody know he was the girl's father?
we just want to put down this marker
it's a Roitt quote
Figure 9.1
Antigen drives immune response
as the antigen concentration falls
due to catabolism
and elimination by antibody
the intensity of the immune response declines
here's the kicker
but is maintained for some time
at a lower level by
antigen trapped on the follicular dendritic cells
of the germinal centres
in other words
some antigen cells are kept as
pets or hostages
to keep the immune system's
'hand in'
extending the period of
contamination response to
a length more like
long term, parasite response

15th June 2020

we don't care to check sources when the source is
less important than the quote
in this vein
we THINK this may be a quote from
The American War of Independence
we think one of the
how shall we say
conspirators
said to the others
Gentlemen, we must all hang together
or else we shall all
hang separately
clearly a motto adopted by the
UK Police Federation
what we are saying is
there are times when evidence has nothing to do with the case
the idea is that
every time a police officer is not
defended in their
right to do wrong
society is adding to the concept
to paraphrase the French police
No Police - no peace
for example
statistics tell us that
there are between 20 and 100
heroin uses on Teesside
and that these people are getting towards elderly
hence, despite the fact that these people have been
on crack for decades
as they die from old age
some will say that four or five
geriatric smack heads dying every year
means
1 every year a quarter of drug users die
2 if it were not for the efforts of the police
Teesside would be completely depopulated in five years
here's a police style statistic
the average intelligence of the general population is
lower than the average intelligence of police officers
hence
all police officers are smarter than everybody else
and should be in charge
of everything


now we will take you back to around 1960
we refer to Ricker's dad Tommy
this will stun and amaze you but
Tommy and his fellow company directors had
Triumph Vitesse motors for their company cars
for reference
1960 - running cars weighing 17 cwt - around one tonne
with six cylinder 90 BHP - horse power - engines
Tommy's boss was George Hodsman
He was the chairman
his sons were - along with Tommy - directors
the directors - mostly not George
would entertain customers to lunch
we talking The Swan Hotel
The Vane Arms
Tommy would tip his drink
into the potted plants when nobody was looking
we guess Paddy - the 'boys' were called Paddy and Hill
we guess Paddy didn't do that
Paddy lost control of his flying machine on
more than one occasion
had to have his scalp sewn back on once
on such occasions he would be taken to the local
cop shop
now our Ricker is no stranger to custody suites
but they are a little different these days
back in those days
if you went into a police custody suite
you found the
Police Benevolent Fund charity box
stuffed it full of notes
and got kicked out for your trouble
out to the street
not the cells



we have to comment at this time about
Life of Brian
and the question
What have the Romans ever done for us?
apart from the roads
and apart from the drains
and apart from the food
and apart from the clean water
and apart for the holidays
and apart from
one of the classic realities is
America gets it's independence
and follows up with a civil war
'India' gets it's independence
and partition into
India and Pakistan
and Pakistan gets it's independence
and there is partition into
Pakistan and Bangladesh
elc etc
latest is
wherever the Ang Sang Su Chee
country
Rohingas
being ousted after independence
we would
if we were out and about
include a picture of the statue outside
Teesside Crown Court
not a blindfolded woman
holding up a set of scales
the scales of justice
a woman holding up
by the scruf of the neck
in one hand a little boy
and in the other hand a little girl
who are bawling at each other
the idea that all was sweetness ond light in
parts of the world distant from Britain
before the British arrived
is tosh
on almost all occasions
the British granted independence when
the locals finally fixed on a decision that
they wanted it
we saw this item about some place where a lot of
our coffee is grown
it pointed out that
the people who now cultivate that coffee
are in no way, in the slightest
British
but they moved to that area less than
one hundred years ago
The British contributed
Greenwich Mean Time
and the Harrison clocks
and James Cook drew maps and charts
all making worldwide navigation and trade possible
and some of the lower ranks behaved very very badly
but James Cook was killed by
Native Action
on a far away beach
and so there is some case for a comparison with
tourists being shot up by
people opposed to
modern life
on foreign holiday beaches
regarding slavery and the definition there of
we would refer you to the
Bosman Ruling
you will be familiar with the idea of
the transfer window in soccer - football and
the Bosman Ruling put an end to the idea that
a football club could
sell a out of contract player
to a rival club
it did not put an end to the convention that
a club can sell a player who is
in contract
to another club
in slavery terms this is
selling down the river
slaves had a better life the further up river
mainly the Mississippi
that they lived and worked
a slave who disobliged his or her owner
could be sold to a slave owner nearer to the sea
where life was harder
almost everybody has a
contract of employment
it is not the existence of the contract that is
a matter of contention
it is the TERMS of the contract that matter
a lot of 'protesters' are young people who are
behoven only to their
doting parents
and so have very advantageous
life terms and conditions




in the short term we owe this Sam to
the show Kindig Customs
but we doubt it originated there
The Dental Sam
I like my women like my dental floss
waxed and minted
we were thinking at this time about
this question
many major religions specify for their adherents
a period of fasting
taking the UK Christian religions as an example
Lent is arranged in the year
for those who don't know it's from
Pancake Tuesday to Easter Sunday
arranged at a rime of year when
food is in short supply anyway
winter stores used up
and perhaps it has been seen as
making a virtue of necessity
a cover for poverty
but that may not be entirely the case
if we were fully up and running we would find out
the details here but we are thinking about cartoons
by Gillray or some such of some king
probably a George
and also thinking of pictures of
Henry the eighth
in later life
grossly over weight
and the only people we see today
looking like that
live in 'deprivation' on Sink Estates
and so
perhaps there traditional periods of fasting were
always designed to give people's bodies a break from the
as we say
incessant gorging
and in the case of Christianity
get people's bodies fit for the
farm work of spring

we have a Ricker story about Lent
at about the time that Ricker was moving on from having all
his food cooked for him by his mother
to cooking his own supper from
Vesta freeze dried meal kits
his mam volunteered to cook him a
last supper before Lent
and it was
chips
and it wasn't very nice
his mam had had this genius idea
she would put Ricker off chips for a month by
cooking him
turnip chips, not potato chips
and we mean French Fries here



we may ask
the reason why elderly kings become
grossly overweight is because they are fed
using the best of ingredients
prepared for them by the best of cooks
is there a link between that and
significant mass ill health being linked to
highly processed food?
the second group of over weight people in history were
cooks
constantly tasting and nibbling and not being
served meals
when food comes straight out of the 'fridge
or from the freezer via five minutes in the microwave....
consider kids no longer outside having adventures
and discouraged from too much
screen time
they are constant fodder for the
feeder who gets their
carer fix
in ten seconds
from the 'fridge to the kitchen table
and the glow from seeing
the little ones 'tucking in'
fades so quickly

we therefore consider that
treating 'the deprived'
like RoyaltyBR> is
Killing them with kindness



in April 2020
in the almost total absence of
rail commuting - trains, tubes, metro
the size of the UK economy
reverted to what it had been in
2003
what we are unlikely to discover is
what would the economy's growth rate from
April 2020 onwards have been
if commuting to London and within London had
ended permanently?
what will be interesting to see is
how much did UK GDP
Gross Domestic Product
change
between
April 2020 and May 2020?
what if/
what if it grew by the same amount - per centage
as it did between April 2019 and May 2019?
the Governor of the Bank of England today
spoke publicly about
instantaneous micro-metrics
in other words
HE KNOWS NOW
how much GDP changed between April and May 2020
and he will have told the Treasury
and if it grew substantially
government will not be fretting about
getting people back on buses and trains
and apparently...
they are not
insisting on face coverings
as
a public health measure
not so much
a confidence boost
we are very overworked and we don't check our metrics
we do however believe that over time this has become a
more widely referenced platform
and so our policy of saying
so few people will read this,
it's not necessary to get permission to
name names
should be reviewed
abd so we will depart from
transparency
and the cloak of
semi-fictionalised
and re-tell old stories without names
but first a new one
consider a little girl of six or seven years
two parents
dad takes ill and spends a lot of time in hospital
eventually he returns home - alive and quite well
happy days
consider two photographs
one before hospital and one after
before hospital both parents are
beyond morbidly obese
after hospital dad is a normal weight
forget gastric bands
think Hotblack Deesitu
a fictional - Hitchhiker's Guide - tycoon
who spent a year dead for tax reasons
take deprived people and
put them in an induced coma for three months
to stop the bastards
incessantly EATING
and get their bodies back to a weight where
they can breathe unaided



say you were a moderately smart but not
massively well educated police officer
your sister gets pregnant
you use your influence to get
your sister a job
since you live in
west Cumbria
you get her a job as visitor centre manager
at Sellafield nuclear re-processing plant
and you get the father
a job in the police
well no - the father is already a police officer
and already married and so not available to
marry your sister
and it gets fixed up for the girl - the daughter
to do an optometry degree
in London
and since you have been so nice about the whole thing
they make you - briefly, for pension reasons
chief constable of Scotland's Highland Region
before all the regions were merged into
Police Scotland
and then the daughter decides to
change her name from
her mother's surname to her father's surname
and your father fixes it for the court to
serve a notice on the daughter's friend from university
never to contact her again
this is your problem
the sending to university
wasn't a sending to university
it was a sending to London
to Farfaraway
and the astonishment, the hurt, the crime
this boy, this university
has caused this girl to
want a graduate for a partner
not a
rather in the spirit of
a Good Jewish Boy
a Nice Young Copper
university life has
ruined the girl for
domestic bliss in the home of Plod
but the boy is an easier target
he has ruined the girl's life
because she
can't forget him
that's the World According to The Filth



we were thinking about referencing
the police pandering to
Daily Mail readers
and we were stuck with how to spell that
so we checked
a panda is
a racoon-like animal found on the
south and east borders of Tibet
no apologies to China for recognising
Tibet
a bear-cat
and thus
a red panda
and so
the black and white jobs?
not pandas
giant pandas
not so cat-like
and nothing whatever to do with
PC Plod
the police pander to bigots
and that use of the word comes from
male - pander
female - pandress
a go-between in base love intrigues
one who ministers to the evil desires
and passions of others
to help satisfy any any unworthy desires
from
Pandarus
in the story
Troilus and Cressida
how apt
Cressida Dick
London Metropolitan police chief



we were a bit hesitant earlier about
being beyond reproach
we thought it may be
Napoleon's wife
but that's
Not tonight Josephine
moving on to the next lover
it's
Caesar's wife must be beyond reproach
and that should apply to
law enforcement
we accept
you can't argue with stupid
but it does appear that
law enforcement have heard of neither
Caesar's wife must be beyond reproach
nor
The Boy who cried Wolf!
in the UK automatic support of law enforcement
seems to have shrunk to readers of
The Daily Mail
and
The Mirror
and that demographic seems to be shrinking
but if they know about the Daily Mail
it's not surprising that with it's
mainly female readership
they press the
little girl lost button
more and more people are turning to
their insurance company not the police
and as they are pressured for a
crime number
by the insurance companies
people are more and more just
cutting their losses
I've used it a couple of times
it's gone
easier to get another one at my expense than
tangle with law enforcement
it really won't be long before
the only people ringing for the police will be
lonely widows
even divorcees will have better things to do


and so we have to put that into terms
The Filth will understand
around half the female population would
these days
think long and hard about contacting the police
because
they would be weighing up
will they come around here
search the place and find
my vibrator
and put me on the
sex offenders register



at this point we are drawn to two concepts
noblese oblige
throwing the baby out with the bath water
to dig aa little deeper
there are many elements in any story
to take migrants as an example
if this Dyson chap was famous for
inventing the
inflatable raft
and one day 400 years from now there was a
statue to him in some city square
would people want to pull it down because
quite a number of people who used
inflatable rafts to cross the channel for
purposes of illegal entry
had fallen over board and drowned?
the reason that two hundred years after a statue was raised to
someone who founded a lot of
improving institutions in the likes of Bristol was that
at the time the statues were being raised
a relatively small number of people were making a lot of money
from their own and other people's inventions
and the labour of many many people
and there were few if any taxes
and most tax was spent on the army
and the purpose of the statues was to say to
the newly rich
if you give to charity
we may raise a statue to you
think on that
and at that time
a statue in a town square was more
inclusive
than a grand tomb hidden away in a local church
oh yee who are without spot of sin
you can always
get an angle
on somebody
if you want to do character assassination
it was 400 years ago
most people did not write
history is written by the winners
we forget because we deliberately forget about Tyneside
Was it Grey or Grainger
probably Grey
major abolitionist
massive statue in Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Newcastle University
the only UK university to confer an
honourary degree on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
in person, during his lifetime
on the other hand
the American abolitionists
were abolitionists because they
could not use slave labour
their economic set up was
not based on
people slaving away in the fields and open country
the Northern Economy was based on
more highly skilled factory work
and factories concentrate labour and
concentrated labour leads to
unions
slaves were dispersed around the countryside and not
Organised Labour
the north wanted the south to have to
pay wages
to level the playing field between North and South
it is all but impossible to know how
willing people in Africa 400 years ago were
to travel to a new life in
America and the West Indies
it is informative to consider
people these days are
hell bent on getting from
North Africa to London
and they end up in Middlesbrough....
the message for
statue toppling is
Don't get famous
just stick to getting rich
it's safer
there does appear to be a strain of
if The British hadn't brought our ancestors here
the Americans wouldn't be able to persecute us
There's a street in Newcastle called
Blackett Street and some say
it should be renamed because
Blackett made his money from
West Indian rum
and it wasn't
Fair Trade rum
The British used
Naval Power to make
World Trade and Globalisation possible
you sell wholesale
you don't get retail prices
providing a market
is making use of an item
but is it automatically
exploitation?
in New York
traditionally
almost everybody in law enforcement was
Irish
most of the psycho cops we hear about have names we may
associate with
Central and Eastern Europe
the myth and folklore is that
the Nazis decamped to
South America
but the entire Americas these days have an air of
mid 20th century central Europe
and the ritual
Blame the British
is misleading
to say the least

8th June 2020

we have quite a list of
texts for the day
lickspittal SkyNews
little girl lost
physician heal thy self
fight fire with fire
during this current health emergency
billions of people around the world have shown
public spiritedness
social solidarity
the one organisation paid to be
public spirited
the police
have shown themselves to be
conniving
and
self serving
the core difficulty seems to be an error
on the part of society as a whole
fight fire with fire
hire the scum of the earth to
put a boot on the neck of
the scum of the earth
can't find trouble?
manufacture some
the supreme venality in this is Sky News and some
print titles
little girl lost sells papers
drag up a 15 year old story
that has had
NO DEVELOPMENTS WHATSOEVER
in the past THREE YEARS
and use it to
sell papers
aggrandise some of the filth
and
distraction defend
others
no wonder the London chief of police is
'depressed'
the final text of the day
agent provocateur
in training
some of the police are selected to
throw the stones
a little training exercise in
Whitehall
will attract media attention
just utterly typical of the
man bites dog
journalism
we have learned to rise above



Here's an idea we haven't seen
when people use public transport
they usually start and end their journey on foot
for the most part
bus stops and railway platforms
at least at one end of the journey
are open air
not enclosed in a building
with concern about transmission of viruses etc.
we are surprised that nobody appears to have advocated
open topped buses
even open sided busses and trains
just take out the windows
as a start
you'd need some really low flying aircraft
to make that work for aviation
but helicopters....




Our Ricker is very tired now
and sometimes he gets cross
and he has a problem remembering
what he meant to say
by the time he's got the kit
up and running
one idea that is available right now is
the matter of
economics
people say that
powerful people don't
do detail
we said something about economics being about
calculating odds
the underpinnings of this are a little more troubling
some may think that this is about
being lazy
if your efforts are concentrated on
predicting outcomes
in a crisis
then you are not much help in
dealing with or resolving the crisis
having a better understanding than other people of
how things are likely to turn out
is really a superset of the thing that
in more recent financial history has been
outlawed
and named
insider trading
if people who are entrusted with
the care of the nation
divert their activities
divert the activities of
civil servants
into providing the elite with
insider information
that is a severe breach of trust
even worse
the point of having
inside information is to
ensure that you
come out on the winning side
and at that deeper level
in order for there to be
a winning side
there has to be
conflict
if your seventh son
requires a luxury yacht of his own
create a crisis from which you can profit
in classic
financial services lingo
the mantra is
churn means fees
and so the extension of that is
the accusation against
Dominic Cummings
is that he deliberately generates
chaos
to disguise change
churn is activity where none is needed
chaos is activity to
disguise or distract from
change
not the same things
opposites


the other issue of the day that comes to mind is
our Ricker's crusade against the
got a problem?
it'll be down to mutations
brigade
sometimes things just happen
one of the things we can say is that
quite a number of famous scientists
died from cancer
we won't fact check this
we are thinking of
Rosalind Frankline, Marie Curie, and
some bloke who pioneered X-ray scanning
Rosalind Frankline didn't really work with radiation
but she did work with
X-ray crystallography
we will be a bit obscure - poetic here
when Enola Gay imparted her
kiss to Hiroshima
tens if not hundreds of thousands of people
died
Enola Gay's gift was white hot
most of the people who died
died from burns
the mutations majors
would expect that region of Japan to be
over run with mutants and have
world record levels of cancer
it ain't so
we've mentioned
John Clough of York
whose son Jack lived in Lazanby, Redcar
drove steam trains
including, occasionally, Malard
we've mentioned tht in common with a lot of
steam engine drivers he
died from stomach cancer
because the crew used to
cook meals on a shovel in the fire box
and after a risk assessment
the railway company
punched holes in the shovels
to stop them
with all that coal and smoke in their lives
footplate crews didn't die
in excess numbers from
lung cancer
but specifically from
stomach cancer
from constantly ingesting
little bits of coal dust
that chronically irritated and wore away their
stomach lining and
caused the cells of the lining to
over-react to the erosion
and perhaps it was when they retired and
stopped scrubbing their insides with their food
that the hyper-activity overshot
perhaps
coal dust imbedded in gut walls
caused
failure of contact inhibition cancer
all of that
ALL of that happened before
labs could routinely check of
genetic mutations
and so
the myth of the mutations
was born
Ricker is deeply indebted to his dentist
sometimes just before an appointment
Ricker gets a reminder text
sometimes he doesn't
he believes the staff just forget
the current dentist did not work at that practice
when it was first set up
the building is an old old terrace house converted
it was set up - converted - by a now retired dentist
Herbie
and was an NHS practice transferred from rooms above
Goodswens butchers on the High Street
Herbie was a man with a first degree in
Chemical Engineering
re-trained as a dentist
and so as an engineer he wanted his
Pink Palace
to be built and engineered to the highest standards
the standard response from staff to patients
enquiring about a missed reminder text is
oh , it's really hard to get a signal in here
the walls are lined with lead
to keep the X-rays in
it seems qute plausible that Herbie had
expanded steel mesh embedded in the plaster to
form a Faraday cage to keep things safe
but the idea of
the entire building
including the reception area
being lead sheathed
like a church roof
is a bit like overkill
but that's nothing to the lengths people have gone to
to re-assure neighbours when building
proton therapy units
people get really really fixated on something and
to hell with evidence
'out of an abundance of caution'
there is another epidemiology story around
radiation
back in the day
there was quite a fashion for
watches with luminous dials
no batteries, no LEDs
the numbers painted on with
radium lacked paint
and the story is that the women who
painted the numbers on the dials
got jaw rot
from constantly
drawing their paint brushes through their lips
to make a fine point
whether they had more jaw rot than other people of
their socio-economic background is not clear
most women seemed to have
all their teeth out
as soon as it was free on the NHS
fifty years ago
it was almost universal for
lab tecs to walk around with
X-ray dosimeter badges on their
lab coat collars
you rarely see that these days
and Ricker has seen footage of
a CAT scanner being
demolished
after decades of use
no measurable hazard

on the other hand it just
beggars belief
to see people who are
morbidly obese
being warned that they are in danger of
starving to death

1st June 2020

and now we do the
Modern History bit
although the miners wanted to
hold the nation to ransom after the end of the
Second World War
the 1960s
The North Sea gave up
Natural Gas
from the early 1970s
but the government didn't have great confidence that
The North Sea would yield all the oil and gas
the UK would ever need
when the oil and gas first started to flow
some people wanted to know
will the UK be applying for membership of
OPEC
Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries
the thing was
The Ayrabs have got all this oil and gas and no
use for it
so the bit that did not apply to the Uk was
Exporting
just exactly why the government thought we had less
oil and gas than we had coal...
not clear
and then we discovered Norway owned half the
North Sea petroleum anyway
so the policy was born
crawl up the arse of the ayrabs
to ensure petroleum supplies for ever
now we see
gen3 energy on the horizon
generation three
coal, oil/gas, alternative
and we've got so far up ayrab arses
we are having trouble climbing back down again
and so to return to F1
we see that Williams F1 and associates is
up for sale
if we were the Italian Government
given that now
Ferrari
is a busted flush
we would give
Pagani
a couple of billion euros
and tell them to buy and fund Williams
and stuff the FIA
and the fact that this hasn't happened
means it's petroleum
not Ferrari
that's a busted flush



Time is moving on now for our Ricker
and thinking back and repeating or revising
earlier writings begins to seem more acceptable

William Robson
lived from
1863 to 1948
he may have lived longer but for circumstance
but perhaps our Ricker would not have been born if he had
every day
literally to his dying day
William Robson
who had been born to Thomas William Robson
and a wife born a Baker - nee Baker
on Low Houslop Farm, at Tow Law
near Wolsingham Grammar School where he studied
he had walked every day from Low Houslop to school and back
and in his old age he replicated that walk
by walking from his home in
Haverton Hill
to
Cowpen Bewley
and one day, on the return
as you left Cowpen he lost the shelter of
a six foot high boarded fence
he had not prepared hin mself for the loss
and the wind blew him to the ground
he was dead from the cold before anybody
found him
not easy to spot in the drifting snow
and William had several children but
Tommy
Tommy hero worshipped William
his father's death shattered Tommy's world
Tommy had been born in 1897
by 1948 Tommy had two sons and a daughter
Tom Gordon born 1924, Peter born 1926, Patricia Maureen born 1934
Tommy was out of the house up to 19 hours a day
how much of that time he spent at work
and how much with his father we cannot say
but his sons were not living at home at the time of
his father's death
they were not living anywhere near home
at a time when travelling the length of the country
in a single day was epic
Tommy had left school somewhat after becoming
14 year old
somewhat after because he attended
High Clarence?
school
and after exceeding school leaving age
he stayed on for a while as a
monitor
a sort of unpaid class room assistant
Tommy's sons graduated from universities
Tommy loved learning and resented his sons' opportunities
quite a lot
not long after Tommy's dad died Tommy gained a
third son by a second wife
and he is our Ricker
we have recently said that
Peter
worked for Maxwell Batley
when Ricker was around mid teens
Tommy and Peter fell out
perhaps one last time
over our Ricker
they both wanted Ricker to live with them
and Tommy won
and so later when Ricker needed Peter for
career help
Peter a partner in Maxwell Batley!
the best he could do was an interview with the
Northamptonshire coroner
for a job that was already filled
for those who don't care
we should say that at the time
the time when Ricker was a young man
Maxwell Batley were
Privy Council agents
and had offices in London, America and Japan
Privy Council agents is like a sort of barrister
if you need to petition the Privy Council
only certain law firms
have audience
our Ricker hasn't kept up with Maxwell Batley history
but he understands that they some time ago moved from being
commercial lawyers
to being
personal lawyers
having individual not corporate clients
our Ricker remembers his last meeting with Peter
it was at a wedding
Peter was still defending his friend at
NatWest bank
said whatever happened, happened below his pay grade...
but just to show how long ago this was
Peter's last apparent dig at his dad
attempt to impress our Ricker?
was to drop the name of his
possibly last client
Kerry Packer
a sort of cross between
Rupert Murdock and Donald Trump
and so
we can say
by choosing his mam and dad over his brother
our Ricker - as a teenager - condemned himself to
internal exile
Up North

for editorial balance we have to note
from a combination of published information and
personal communication
we are not clear whether our Ricker's exile was
personal to him
or the result of his association with his friend
Jane Rowland
as we have previously said
her non-appearance on Tiny's Wikipaedia page
is curious
we checked once and couldn't find him in
Who's who
either
folk won't remember how
the establishment
The Management
is that Hale and Pace?
decided that Mohamed Al Fayed
and not Tiny Rowland
should buy
Harrods



there was a system back in the day where
A levels were entirely about
University Entrance
and in a sense if you were an oik
you studied for and sat
JMB
Joint Matriculation Board
that was the entrance exam board for
five universities
we know they included
Sheffield and Leeds
the others may have included Liverpool and Manchester
so if you were the one guy in the class who was
taking JMB and applying to
Oxford or Cambridge....
not so good
not doing their entrance exam
however, what we do recall is
schools entered pupils for exams
not parents, not pupils
even though the pupils were
18 or 19 years old
and there was a strange anomaly
the pupil - student - was expected to turn up for and take
the exams they had been entered for
and schools made university applications on behalf of students
and wrote anonymous references for students to universities
the strange by-product of this was pupils finding
a General Studies A level exam on their exam time table
turning up and doing the exam and
General Studies never appearing on their Exam Certificates
as a subject
one explanation is that this was some sort of
insurance policy
if you failed all your subject exams you could still attend
Founders Day or whatever and be handed a
General Studies certificate
and so to
Oxford and PPE
Philosophy, Politics and Economics
a kind of General Studies degree in which you could get
First Class Honours
even if that is not quite true
many of the people who end up in government have degrees in PPE
and if we ignore the PP bit
the economics bit
if the studies are taken at all seriously
are really about
applying statistics to futurology
they push the nation's leaders into
estimating what will happen next
on the basis of what happened before
in essence
calculating odds
that's what economics is
and so a 'trained economist' is not interested in
facts or logic
but in
odds
chances, probabilities



Sooo
it's official
F1 motor racing is now officially
Banger Racing
not so much
run wot ya brung
more
run what you brought
five years ago
who wants to buy a car
nailed together by a bunch of
donkey jacketed thugs in Oxfordshire?
that's what they used to say about
British Leyland cars
F1's going the same way
where is the
Alec Issigonis
of Williams and McLaren
and why is F1 so cheap?
a bloke who sells sodas for a living can
afford to run TWO teams
there's more fun watching
push bike racing
sell it to the yanks, they said
they got money, they said
day by day
dollar by dollar
dreams dribble away
so far as we know
when F1 ditched tobacco advertising
it didn't ban
Petronas, Shell, Esso
Esso is phonetics for
SO
ans SO stands for
Standard Oil
changed it like dropping
Standard from Standard Triumph
when standard stopped meaning
exemplary
and began to mean
entry level
why the hell aren't they each putting
a couple of billion a year into F1?
we are left with
ABB or similar putting
a couple of hundred quid into
Formula E>BR> look what the UK government can put into
lockdown compensation
and the attitude of
oil giants to motorsport
Ricker has got the hump
he's now seem all the Fantomworks episodes
no more Audrey
it is very interesting how
US TV executives see a series as pointless
if there are no pranks
what he found most amusing was the episode where
he - the owner - couldn't fix a
Morgan
because he didn't get Audrey to
email Morgan
and he didn't see the
kitemark on the windscreen that said
it was toughened not laminated
some glass is
BOTH
toughened AND laminated
and you can't drill that either
and - from another episode - glass doesn't
snap around sharp angles
seven screens to figure out you need to
grind a right angle into glass
but there is a more serious aspect to this
people build up businesses and
discover they can't run them any more
so they sell the business and buy - build the
cars of their childhood dreams
however
sometimes they don't buy a car
they pay a PR or lawyer to
re-establish the
morality they were brought up with



when we talk about
globalisation
we forget that we still have alive with us today
the likes of our own dear - dirt cheap actually
Ricker
who are a bridge with a much more
fragmented past
when Ricker was a lad his dad taught him about
gardening and two words from then have stayed with him
gripe
Ricker can find no reference to his dad's usage of the word
the old saying was
he calls a spade a spade
not a shovel or a trowel
Tommy understood two garden implements
a spade and a gripe
and a gripe was a
fork
a gripe was a gripe because its prongs could be used to
spear something and get a grip on it that a spade could not
the other memorable word from gardens - allotments - past
is
wickens
wickens are a form of grass, a weed in the garden that
has tough root style runners that
have a resemblance to
candle wicks
so wickens was wick uns
wick ones
when Ricker started to get some other gardening information from
the television and
Percy Thrower
he learned that people in the Great Beyond
referred to wickens as
couch grass
and couch grass is where we want to be at right now
how does a grass evolve to be so darned difficult to
eradicate when poa annua almost leaps into the trug
at the sight of a human hand?
some weeds are easier to shift
but they all seem to still exist
until you bring in
glyphosate weed killer
some survive by being tough
some survive by breeding like rabbits
and so it is with germs
some have grown up in the mean streets
some are the social butterflies of the likes of
Monaco
if people and such develop defences against germs
some of the germs will be just that bit tougher
and the tougher ones will take over
the world of germs
as opposed to the world of people where
they will find life increasingly difficult
and get even more complicated as the selection pressure
increases
we want to comment about a couple of thing that
require some basic information
diphtheria is a bacterial infection
'flu is a virus infection
there are parallels however
they are both initially infections of the nose and throat
sometimes we expect the United Kingdom to be
behind the curve relative to
the United States (of America)
we hve a little history regarding diphtheria
we forget when small pox was declared the first and only
infection eradicated
the history of diphtheria in the UK is interesting
taking data from
G Dick 1980 Leiden University Press
Immunisation
the British began immunisation of mostly children
around 1938 to 1939
at which point there were
12,000 notifications of diphtheria
per
100,000 people
a serious problem
by the time our Ricker was born in the 1950s
there were almost none
and so far as we know it has stayed that way
in the United States we are not so sure about
diphtheria vaccinations
what we do know is that there is a very cheap
antibiotic called erythromycin
which our Ricker has taken a few times
without problem
and which is the indicated treatment for diphtheria in the US
we don't have figures for diphtheria in the USA or worldwide but
we assume it has not joined small pox on the
extinct pathogens list
the argument from the drug companies is
some ethnic groups and enclaves
specifically
American Indians
First Nations People
refuse to take the erythromycin
on cultural and religious grounds
what is interesting is that this sheds light on the
now on the back burner
issue of herd immunity
whatever proportion of people take erythromycin
what they are doing is killing any diphtheria bacteria
they are carrying at the time
the book referred to above contends that
the level of herd immunity achieved in the UK in the war years
that wiped out diphtheria
was
75 per cent
the stated problem is
75 per cent of the nation is no good
if zero per cent of an enclave have co-operated
it is possible that there being a war on
didn't get the national figure over 75 per cent but
did force the enclaves into some level of compliance



protection from different type of infection require
different types of immune preparation
defence against polio requires high levels of antibodies
TB tuberculosis is a disease of a thing that is much bigger
part bacteria, part fungus
and to be ready for that you need
macrophage-activating cell-mediated immunity
'flu can we include CoViD-19?
you need
antibodies
AND
cytotoxic T-cells
and here's a completely different perspective
cholera
it's too late trying to tackle that with
antibodies of cookie monsters
the route to protection from cholera is
cue the Actimel adverts
antibodies need to be in the gut lumen
mixed in with your food not your blood
to inhibit the cholera from
getting a foothold on the gut wall
and gaining entrance in the first place
friendly bacteria time
gut flora extravaganza
if it were not for the terrible toll
in human misery and death
HIV would be an entertaining curiosity
HIV human immunodeficiency virus
is an RNA virus
but it does something quite spectacular
when it invades a human cell
it uses reverse transcriptase
which it carries around
to produce a DNA sequence that it inserts into the cell
humans having DNA
now this is not completely off the wall
humans store information as DNA but they translate that
information
into instructions for cell activity
using transcriptase
human cells routinely have
messenger RNA
there is no such thing as
messenger DNA
HIV locks onto a host cell
it releases
single strand RNA
it uses its own reverse transcriptase to
coppy off
double strand DNA from its RNA
it gets the DNA incorporated into the human cell
and then, dan dan darr
nothing happens until
years later
the human cell decides to transcribe that area of DNA
and it
'thinks' it doesn't think it just is
it thinks it's producing
human messenger RNA
and it's actually producing
HIV RNA
weird or what?
and this does not happen just anywhere to any cell
the human cells involved T-cells and are called
phytohemagglutin blasts
presumably the only human cells where this
'trick'
works
you may have heard some talk about two populations of
HIV positive people
those who are positive for the virus
and those who are both positive for the virus
and
suffer from the disease
those with the disease have
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
it can be said
somewhat inaccurately that
people with HIV and no AIDS
were infected by contaminated blood products
more exactly, but not exactly
if you have a lifestyle that constantly exposes you to
Pneumocystis carinii, cytomegalovirus, Epstein Barr Virus
herpes,
and fungi such as
Candida, Aspergillus, and Cryptococus
and the protozoan, Toxoplasma
then your modified CDA T cells
are more likely to be switched on
and start producing HIV particles
it is very difficult to imagine that a health service that
depended on buying blood products from
street sleepers would
engineer such as pathogen to wipe them out
but it is a quite extraordinary story
the reason why we know HIV wasn't engineered is that
it was only the names HIV and AIDS that came about
whenever they did in the late 20th century
the disease was long known as endemic
local to
parts of Africa
and known as
slim


and the other interesting virus we
previously made passing reference to is
HPV
Human Papilloma Virus
and there is a link here
a substantial minority of tumours - cancers
arise from infection with
oncogenic DNA viruses
including
Epstein-Barr virus - EBV
in lymphomas
and HPV in cervical cancers
and RNA viruses in human T-cell leukaemia virus 1
HTLV-1
the dysregulated uncontrolled cell division of
cancer cells
creates a milieu in which
the products of normally silent genes
are expressed
sometimes these encode differentiation antigens
normally associated with earlier foetal stages
in other words
the virus switches - not by design
jsut by being there switches back on growth genes that were switched off
but not destroyed
way back in the womb
and affected cells
grow like Topsy
and become
a tumour



be your own immunologist
go to
www.roitt.com
We said we read books
sometimes a quote and an acknowledgement
is best
just a side note first
redcar.biz is designed for
laptop viewing
our.st is designed for
smart 'phone viewing
viewing redcar.biz on a 'phone is a bit of
a pain
OK
the thing is
pot calling the kettle
black
back from the days when both were heated on an
open fire
anyway, in this context
doctors complain about patients who
consult Dr. Google, the Internet
the trouble is
most doctors in Primary Care
General Practitioners, Family Doctors
these days say
if you have more than one thing wrong with you
make more than one appointment
and then search the NHS for a protocol on the
disease the appointment is about
and so
their response to a problem may vary drastically
from one day to the next
people who write textbooks
need to be a whole lot more careful
and so we make no apology for quoting from an
immunology textbook written twenty years ago
the one we are quoting from is a sort of
programmed text
version of the original
somebody called
Arthur Rabson
has converted
Ivan Roitt's
Essential Immunology
into a programmed text called
Really Essential Medical Immunology
and Peter Delves was involved in both books
so the Mickey Mouse adaptation....
Tufts University, Boston
the core material
Royal Free, University College Hospital, London
first quote
Milestone 17.1
In an attempt to confirm
Paul Ehrlich's
concept of
'horror autotoxicus'
the body's dread of making
antibodies to itself
Rose and Witebsky
immunized rabbits with
rabbit thyroid extract
in complete Freund's adjuvant
this procedure
also done in rats
resulted in
resulted in the production of
thyroid antibodies
autoantibodies
and
chronic inflammatory destruction of
the thyroid gland architecture
end quote
in the current CoVuD-19 crisis
there is talk of
cytokine storm
this is why we put
transplant patients
kidney being the classic
on
immune suppressants
any kind of disturbance
let us say
chronic disturbance to distinguish
a wound or surgery or
metal or plastic implant
from
a chronic disturbance such as
a chronic infection
or the presence of a biologically active
implant such as a kidney transplant
with a biologically active
chronic implant
such as a chronic infection
in the case of COViD-19
a wart virus that penetrates to the lungs
the secondary disease is
autoimmune
and far from
boosting the immune system
it needs to be calmed down
and in the spirit of
Walt Disney....
The simplest way to avoid infection is to
prevent micro-organism from gaining access
to the body
the major line of defence is of course the skin
that, when intact is impermeable to most infections
Most bacteria fail to survive for long on the skin
due to the direct inhibitory effects of the
lactic acid and fatty acids in sweat
and sebaceous secretions
and the
low pH
high acidity
they represent
an exception is
staphylococcus aureus
which
hair follicles, blackheads, acne
mucus secreted by the membranes lining the
inner surfaces of the body
acts as a protective barrier
to block the adherence of bacteria to
epithelial cells
microbial and other foreign particles
trapped within the adhesive mucus
are removed by mechanical strategems
such as
ciliary movement, coughing and sneezing
plus ,BR> flows of tears, saliva and urine
natural chemical defences include
acid in gartric - stomach - juice
spermine and zinc in semen
lactoperoxidase in milk
lyzozyme in tears, nasal secretions and saliva
in the vagina
women, all females, benefit from a bit of a free ride
works like this
if you are not so stupid as to kill off your
house guests
they secrete lactic acid to
repel gate crashers
commensal organisms - your house guests
metabolise glycogen secreted by
vaginal surface cells - epithelia
into lactic acid that deters, destroys
foreign biota
that may stray there
and so
if you overdo the antibiotics...
protective commensals are disturbed
and things you don't want get a foothold
classically
Candida albicans
thrush, darling
and
Clostridium difficile
The perceptive Russian zoologist
Elie Metchnikoff
1845 - 1916
recognised that certain specialised cells
mediate defence against microbioal infections
so fathering the whole concept of
cellular immunology
1882 he shoved rose thorns into
star fish larvae
and because these larvae are transparent
he could see that
there were cells in the larvae that could move - motile
and there moved and surrounded the rose thorn
that set him off on studying more complex animals
and he ended up with two types of
cookie monster
both polymorpholeucocytes
microphages
and
macrophages
here is another important matter
we said T-cells are born in the bone marrow
what we didn't say is
they
share a common haem(at)opoietic - blood forming stem cell
with the other formed elements of the blood
all the cells - including the RBCs - bud off from the same
mother cells
and
mother can't make RBCs at the same time as cookie monsters
so
cookie monster birthrate up
red blood, oxygen carrying corpuscle birthrate down
and neither live for very long
RBCs up to 80 days
similar for cookie monsters
the exception are
the long-lived
mono-nuclear phagocyte system
to simplify
the poly go for the things that
blunder in and make a mess
the mono go for the
entrenched parasites
and as we have said
spleen
lymph nodes
also
lung, liver(Kupffner cells)
we expect your eyes have glazed over by now
but we may return to this if
the people from
The University of Betty's Tea Rooms
publish any more bullshit

27th May 2020

It's called
Group Think
it's also called
FOMO
fear of missing out
we've tried to be nice
to drop hints
to use
nudge think
here is your scenario
the one you haven't thought through
kids in Primary School
a dozen or so at a time
one in the pack is
snottered to hell
picking their nose
blowing there nose
putting their hands in their mouth
you send them home
no prob
would you ask them to
wash their hands in your school
before they leave?
another kid shows no particular signs but
is infected and has been
picking their nose and putting their hands in their mouth
when you say
scrub your hands
it suggests
to the kid in us that
hand washing is a
vigorous activity
so if you are a kid you
turn the taps
FULL ON
water splashing everywhere
then the kid
adds virus to the splashing water and
the kids using the sinks
either side of them
breath in the deadly elixir
stick to the alcohol wipes
if you have a religious objection to
ethanol
spectacle cleaning wipes use
iso-proply alcohol
test to see if that works
stop seeking
homespun bastardisations
of the scientific advice

26th May 2020

interesting to see how so many really nice people
in the media
have never heard of
Barny
Barnad Cassle
Barnard Castle
some got it as
Castel Barnard
confusing it with
Bamburgh were they?
just to put the record straight
it has, for news purposes, a
Young Offenders Institute
that used to be an RAF base
regarding
Dominic Cummings
There's no fool like an old fool
when an older man marries a younger wife
there is a tendency for him to regard her as a
daughter
a Princess
perhaps as a mistress
rather than a partner
for those who can afford this it has been in the past
acceptable
if you are regarding your wife as your daughter
and her child as
your grandchild
especially if you work long hours
you can become
wildly over indulgent
of your little family
if the wife is, on top of this
a first time mother
all logic goes out of the window
most people won't know what a
PeLiCon crossing is
it is a pedestrian light controlled crossing on a highway
central York is a very busy place
one day Ricker was about his business in York
and about to use a pelicon crossing
this bloke came rushing toward him
setting off to cross the road
against the lights
and shouting
I have a child, I have a child
as though the universe would hear him and re-set the lights
kiddies can really mess with your mind
some call it
Baby brain
we have to make allowances
up to a point

25th May 2020

Oh Ricker in danger of having his
thunder stolen
T-cell
a native T-cell
is a T cell that has
differentiated in bone marrow and
and then been tuned up in the
thymus
the thymus is a gland in the chest
we are not in the business of going
too deep into detail
simly because we can
there's a chicken and egg problem here
B-cell lymphocytes produce antibodies
T-cell lymphocytes are the cookie monsters
there are loads of types of T-lymphocytes and they
are born in the bone marrow and
go to uni in the thymus
as we get older our thymus shrinks
as does our brain
a major part of
dementia
is that our brains become
ROM
read only memory
as opposed to
RAM
random access memory
and so
the University of the Thymus
stops recruiting fresh tutors
and they concentrate on
how we fought the Boer War
the chicken and egg thing is
1 the egg came first because
the first chicken egg was a
mutant version of something that
wasn't quite a chicken
2 you get CoViD-19 if you are old
you have a shrivelled thymus if you are old
you don't need a blood test to know that
your thymus will have dementia compared to
how it was thirty years ago
counting T-cells
may be a semi non-invasive method of telling
just how far your thymus is
but an x-ray or scan would do that

18th May 2020

we are not going to dispute that
CoViD-19
is a pandemic
it could be said to be
an epidemic
in each country where it is occurring
what is interesting is that
linguistically
to describe something as
pandemic - as an description, and adjective
as opposed to a noun - a thing
is the same as describing it as
cosmopolitan
kosmos - the world
polites - citizen
both cosmopolitan and pandemic mean the same as each other
and the opposite of
endemic
endemic means local
it has come to be used to mean
entrenched
but it really means local
and so..
why the yearning tp describe CoViD-19 as
a pandemic?
we have not seen the headline yet in print
but we see it in the mind's eye of sub-editors
PANdemIC
pandemic contains the essence of
PANIC
the very stuff of headlines



the Greek,
honestly when we say that we don't know
how much modern Greek differs from Ancient Greek
but we assume we are meaning Ancient Greek
the Greek for
smell
is
osme
and as the medical English is
an osmia
not
a nosmia
and for the same reason that it's
an apple
not
a apple
and presumably plastic surgeons have a term for
Cirano de Bergerac syndrome
is that correct
straight off the top of Ricker's head???
there will be a medical term for
having no nose
if we were inventing one
aproboscia
however
proboskis
is Greek for trunk
so
a problem there because
animals with a trunk
have
tusks
and
nasal
isn't Greek
it's
Latin
nasus nose
if it's medical, if in doubt
assume it's Greek
given our Ricker's beginnings he can say
with certainty
all I want for Cwismas is
me ma two front teef
so I can wish you
a Mewwy Cwismas
aproterodont
means
without a
fore proteros
tooth odos
technically
without pre-maxillary teeth



there has been a little comment on
CoViD-19
that what is sauce for the goose in the sense that
whatever the logic behind deciding that
the population must be protected from
CoViD-19
that protection is
'really bad news'
for a whole lot of other infections
and whatever objections there may be to
'un-natural medications'
antibiotics, vaccinations etc.
the antivacs don't seem to have got their act together
to any significant extent
to oppose
behavioural public health actions
lockdowns, track and trace etc>BR> clearly they have objected but for some reason
the mainstream media have not
allotted them
equal time and exposure
on this occasion
and so several infections may
go the way of small pox
as colateral damage
as we write we stand at almost two thirds through
the original 3 month CoViD-19 lockdown
at this point we are thinking about a time
1970
fifty years ago
and one third of the way from
the start of the UK NHS and the present
and so we are looking at some of the things that were written
at the twenty five years in, stage
Cyril A Clarke
was then
Head of the Department of Medicine and
Director of the Nuffield Unit of Medical Genetics
University of Liverpool
he wrote
Human Genetics and Medicine
genetics is of increasing importance in medicine
because more is known about the basic facts of
inheritance
and partly because
with the control of many infections with
antibiotics
and
public health measures
genetic disorders
are relatively more frequent than they were
end quote
this was a serious doctor and scientist
speaking to us from hs time
this will stand some textual analysis
DNA and RNA stop being
mystery stuff
between 1952 and 1962
if like Ricker you studied these things in the 1970s
you did two separate genetics courses
taught by different lecturers
the old guys taught
Mendelian Genetics
the genetics of
what gives
Mendel was a priest who bred peas
specifically
wrinkled and smooth peas
and the young guys taught
Molecular Genetics
the story of how it works
nobody taught about how to do
Gene Editing
and so our Dr. is one of the old guys
and so his line is a bridge between the two camps
his line is
1 infections are now under control and so
they are not
preferentially
thinning out the genetic defectives
'relatively more frequent' means
say one in a thousand children born
have a genetic disorder
say nine out of ten of them
die from measles before they reach school age
and only one in a thousand kids without a genetic disorder
die from measles before school age
people over the age of five who have
genetic abnormalities will be
few and far between
but if you remove infections
they will make up an increased proportion of the population
2 from the molecular camp he picks up on
now that we know how genetics works
and we can see that
things that run in families are
real, physical, chemical differences
we cannot say that
people with non-infectious diseases
got them because they were unlucky
or because their parents were poor and
couldn't feed them properly
he concludes that the
new era role of genetics is to
prop up
genetic counselling
and this is the area between
knowing how genes work
and this is being able to
detect genetic errors at an early stage and
convince prospective parents to
go for a termination
most right thinking people would say
and we are not entirely sure we can
number Phil the Greek amongst these
most right thinking people think
we should eradicate pestilence - infections
and not the genetically enfeebled
and so
in a sense
between
Watson, Crick, Frankline and Wilkins
and the gene editors
we had an era when we developed
techniques along the lines of
surrogacy
and
invitro fertilisation
that's fertilising human eggs in a glass dish
not up somebody's chuff
that being
in vivo
within the living
we have no evidence that the folks who have
campaigned against
antibiotics and vaccines
were in fact
modern day Spartans
in Ancient Greece
the Athenians - people who lived in Athens
were the softies
and The Spartans - people who lived in Sparta
were the toughies
Athens - Edinburgh
Sparta - Glasgow
so the legend goes that women in Sparta would leave their
new born babies out exposed on the hillside above the city
for a night
and if they were alive next morning
they were worth the trouble of raising them
the professor was dealing with
nature does not sort these kids any more
because we have done away with infections
1 we have to learn how to
and
1a we have to pay for
lifelong care for the defective who 'should have' died
in infancy
Gone and never called me Mother
populations - communities with
high infant mortality rates will have
low CoViD-19 mortality rates


however this is not so simple
1 Hardy-Weinberg
2 Huntington's Disease our man had that down as
Huntington's chorea
Hardy-Weinberg states that with certain provisos
if two contrasting genetic traits exists within a population
they will continue in the same proportions
from generation to generation
the major proviso is that
the two traits was not subject to
selective pressure
and so
brown hair, blonde hair
but not brown hair, red hair
nobody fancies a ginner
we exaggerate
to switch from Huntington's
to pre-mature male pattern baldness
some genetic defects
don't manifest themselves
until after you have bred
so
to be more serious
you think you could handle a dose of that guy
but you don't realise
he and his (your) kids will be
full blown demented
before they is fifty
nobody expects the young women of
the 1970s to have faith in
gene editing
and so they were not keen on
tests for the likes of
Down's syndrome
our man had quite a list
Anencephaly, a no brainer, one in five hundred
you do know why you have ultrasounds during pregnancy
cleft palate four in ten thousand
cleft lip, with or without cleft palate
one in a thousand
club foot, one in a thousand
congenital heart disease, six in a thousand
there are only three common birth defects
that are more common in girls than boys
dislocated hip
curvature of the spine
both six times more common in females
spina bifida
just more common
and a 4th
just more common
manic depressive psychosis
four kids in every thousand
three girls for every two boys
and a 10 to 15 percent chance
if you produce one nutter
all yer kids will be nutters
whether or not you is normal
there are more psycho women than psycho men
women are just
better at it
the reason for genetic defects being more pronounced
in males is that
for most species, not just humans
males are experiments
the natural process is for a community to
breed from
most of its females
and very few of its males
the essential female role is to
cop a dose of the
most impressive bloke they can get their hands on
but over time
rather unimpressive specimens have
developed the likes of
religions
to give the male dross - failed experiments
a chance to breed
in more natural conditions
women want two types of men
the impressive ones to
harvest a dose from at the appropriate
time of the month
and a gay guy
to act as a wife
for the remainder of the time
and by contrast....
schizophrenia?
one per cent of babies...
equal males and females
14 per cent chance
all your kids will have it if one does
and an interesting aside
in the UK there are normally
half a million nutters walking the streets of the UK
and they've all been under house arrest
for the past two months
where are the mass graves?
have they been better behaved during lockdown?
schizophrenia is now called
bipolar
nobody has said anything about whether
lockdown is
calming
we would guess it is soothing for
autism
we saw one case where
one bipolar subject has got by with
two months of Sundays
an interesting side line here
Never in a month of Sundays
back in the day
people had children as a
workforce
an unhelpful child - not doing chores
would be described as
cheaper to keep a week than a fortnight
applied to horses too
and so
the work value of an adult daughter
versus the work value of a wife
when a man sought permission from a man to
marry his daughter
the father would agre to
offer his daughter's hand in marriage
in exchange for
the groom working a month of Sundays
for the Father-in-Law
the trick was
a month of Sundays isn't
the Sundays in a month - 4 or 5
it's 28 to 32 Sundays
the groom would work on the father-in-law's farm
or in his business
on 30 Sundays - his days off from his
weekday employer
to compensate for the loss of chores from the daughter
somewhat different from
I has two of everything
I told you when I wrote
but now I've one of
nothing at all
through
Paddy McGinty's goat
her trousseau
eaten by a goat
so we have
month of Sundays
trousseau
and
dowry
take this good for nothing wench off my hands
and I'll pay you
please marry this bitch
so her younger sister can get married
Taming of the Shrew
Kiss me Kate



to return to the Hardy-Weinberg law
this is the reason why there is almost always
a replacement pathogen when we
eliminate a threat
the idea is
every species has an range of
ever present
understudies - potential replacements
we introduce a selective pressure
the proportion of the
traditionallly dominant variant
goes down
and the proportion of the traditionally sub-dominant variant
goes up
and if it was previously at
almost undetectably low levels
we think it is a new mutant variation




the most important thing about
science
and in particular
medical science
is that almost everybody picks up
a smattering along the way
and
a little knowledge can be dangerous
setting aside the plot lines of
zombie movies
people who have paid a little attention to
news stories over the years....
think about all those kids who race go carts
from the age of six
and then have a super licence
before they have a
public highway driving licence
and how they can relate to sharing the road with
people who passed their test at the
20th attempt in their late fifties...
it is difficult to have a
meeting of minds
and so
how do folk who trained as doctors
to be one up on their pharmacist parents
relate to problems in medicine that
don't relate to drug selection?
and how do real deal bio-medical scientists
time was...
people with bio-medical science degrees
weren't allowed to be members of
The Institute of Biologists
because they were
lab technicians
not
scientists
how do real deal bio-medical scientists
get inside the heads of
clinicians and lab tecs?
it ain't easy
and so you have to put your
couch potato head on
and think
what related news stories have I seen that these also people
will have seen?
and Ricker has come to the conclusion
had the light bulb moment
the epiphany
if you know sod all about immunology
and you were asked to recall a news story about immunology
what would be the first one you can remember
it strikes Ricker that a recurring theme in
immunology news stories is
the Boy in the Bubble
kids who don't have an immune system
or more recently have had it deliberately destroyed
to counter an auto-immune disease
if you were a boy in a bubble you would be
helpless in the face of any infection
we hear that story over and over again
and so
the amateur or dilettante immunologist thinks
I have a functioning immune system but
BUT
if I haven't been vaccinated against
the specific pathogen I face today
then I am as defenceless as
the boy in the bubble is
whatever infection he meets
and hence the headless chicken dismissal of
all forms of defence that
don't involve
antibodies

11th May 2020

it's often a bit uncomfortable trying to define
democracy
one definition is
if I can't be
King of the World
somebody like me should be
often the people of a country, population whatever
who have a
despotic leader
are divided about his or her
qualities and suitability
and so another definition of democracy is
as at present in the United States
anybody born here
can be elected President
but not more than twice
not for more than 8 years
the real difficulty with democracy is when a nation is faced with
complex, nuanced, decisions
it is interesting that perhaps
newspapers grew out of
pamphlets
flyers
people who wanted to influence public opinion discovered
literacy amongst the masses
and discovered printing
and put them together
and then people got a taste for
news and opinion
and began to be a target market for
advertising
and to sell advertising you have to sell copies of views
and so
newspapers developed the technique of reducing every issue
into a startling headline
quite what the link is between that and
police officers needing to have the mental outlook of
newspaper sub-editors
escapes us
that having been said....
setting aside police officers and newspaper editors
people are mostly willing to divide life's gristle
always look on the bright side of life
into
problems for the pub
and
problems to leave to the experts
most people don't have a category
problems that must be
dumbed down
and every now and again Ricker writes something that
has a complex back story
and then gets interested in the details
hence recourse to
The Electron Microscope in Biology
by
A. V. Grimstone
assistant director of research
Department of Zoology
University of Cambridge
in 1968
quote
all viruses are exceedingly small
but some are smaller than others
a few of the larger ones can just be seen
in the light microscope as minute dots
but their shape cannot be made out
and nothing can be seen of their
internal structure
before the advent of the electron microscope
the shapes and dimensions of viruses had to be
deduced indirectly
for example
by determining how fine a filter they would pass through
or studying their rate of sedimentation in a centrifuge
gap in quote
specimens which are to be studied in the electron microscope
have to be supported on something
and this obviously cannot be a glass slide as in a light microscope
since this would be opaque to electrons
we'll paraphrase from here
they used small metal grids about 2 to 3 mm in diameter
normally made of copper
the holes in the grid being 0.1 mm in diameter
these were normally made by a process very similar to
chrome plating
electrolytic deposition onto a suitable substrate as he says
and as 'sheet' of nitrocellulose
celloidin
was laid over the grid to be between the sample and the copper
the sample is obtained by
putting the tissue in a blender
he says homogeniser
and then a centrifuge to get rid of the dross
wash and centrifuge at least three times...
suspend in saline - salty water
put a drop of virus rich saline onto a grid
allow it to dry
in order to obtain satisfactory images of virus particles
some method of enhancing their capacity to
scatter electrons must be employed
in 'staining' for the electron microscope
consist of certain salts of heavy metals
lead, uranium, or tungsten
which have high atomic numbers
from example dunk it in
uranyl acetate
mainly these 'stains' will be taken up by
proteins
and so
for viruses
what they do is
flood the grid and
the virus particles will be
islands in a lake of stain
and the electrons get through the virus
and not through the surrounding
dried up lake bed
the 'plating' method we touched on earlier is called
shadowing
in a vacuum chamber you vaporise a chunk of metal
imagine a tennis ball
imagine a spot light shone on it from an angle
a sort of shadow will appear on the side of the tennis ball
opposite to the source of the stream of metal particles
and some sort of image can be had from that
the metal that hits the virus
doesn't hit the grid
so if the virus 'falls off' the grid
there will be a virus shaped gap in the layer of metal
deposited onto the grid
none of this is
an every day tale of virus folk
going about their evil business
all about deducing things from
artefacts
it is known from chemical analyses that
most virus particles consists of nothing else other than
a protein coat
and a nucleic acid core - the genetic material
as we have said
soaps and detergents
cut through grease
fats, oils lipids
you need a
biological washing powder
with added enzymes
to destroy proteins
or strong alcohol
viruses are not built like
Malteesers
they are not chocolate coated
they just look like it
the book contains a real electronmicrograph of
a human wart virus
they look an awful lot like the pictures of
corona viruses we see on the news on the telly
we should note at this point that
a virus is ninety odd per cent either
DNA or RNA
and Watson and Crick did not deduce the structure of DNA
by bunging a sample into an electron microscope
they got
Rosalind Frankline
to crystallise the material and do
X-ray crystallography on the material to
provide them with the data they needed
would the
I'm the Professor of Virology at
Betty's Tea Rooms
brigade
zip it
shut the fuck up
the best way to explain how viruses get
multiplied, reproduced is
it's like somebody clicking on
send all
when sending an email
you think you are sending the whole email
but you are sending a copy to each of the addresses in your
contacts list
it's no more complicated than that






we are sensitive about making public statements about
the private lives of public figures
but an old fool can get emotionally involved in an apparent
problem
Ricker does think
Ant Partridge
does not appear to be making much of a job of
making Helen Stanley happy
such an attractive l
and self confident lass
when she first appeared
on our screens
not so long ago
we depend very much on what
our Ricker can remember
but we do have some recourse to reference material
we note that wikipaedia head their entry on
coronavirus with a
transmission electronmicroscope image of the virus
not the current one but similar
and we had earlier said we did not know whether the
artists impressions on the telly
were based on transmission or reflection
electonmicrographs
so now we know
and we know that the environment in which
these snaps were taken
is very hostile
vacuum, electron bombardment etc.
we would suggest that what is in the images is
actually the result of
contrast in the image deriving from
some part of the virus absorbing more or less of
a stain
probably a heavy metal - top of Ricker's head, osmium
introduced to the viral sample
before the sample was placed inside the microscope
a ghost in the machine
Ricker knows a bit more about
herpes virus than corona virus
and a basic distinction is that
herpes is DNA based
and corona is RNA based
nobody seems to have settled on an antiviral for corona
but acyclovir is used in herpes cases
what we want to explain here is the likely best case scenario
regarding antiviral drugs
the mode of action of Zovirax is that the trade name?
is that you ingest the drug
your body converts it into something else and then
we get to the Lego analogy
Lego bricks depend on having as one may say
a male and a female surface
a knobbly side and a cavity side
when you add a brick you press the cavity side
down onto a knobbly surface and the two bricks stick together
if you are - for instance - making a model of a
fuel filling station you want to
distinguish
entrance from exit and so you lay down a
perimeter wall
you could just lay down standard bricks
but you may wish to make a neater job by
choosing the thinner - often white - bricks that
have a cavity side and the knobbly side is replaced by
a nice neat smooth surface
the mode of action of acyclovir is that it is converted in the body
into
flat topped bricks
when the virus is forcing the host cell to synthesise more
of the virus DNA
the cell picks up the drug product
instead of the regular DNA component and thus
a synthetic stop is put to virus production
and here is the prime issue
the drug stops or hinders new virus production
it is not lethal to the virus
other mechanisms need to do the
clear up
the work of removing the already existing virus
and frankly
if that does not happen
as soon as the drug dose runs out
we are back where we started since
no damage has been done to the
complete, entire, virus particles in the body
and so,
the 'best hope' for a drug
as a stand alone
is to put a patient into a
I'm not currently manufacturing virus
mode
so long as the drug is being administered
but other more toxic drugs are being researched
yer quick dirty solution is
bung patients drugs such as acyclovir and
measure the drug titre to look for an effect
but as to
saving the life of the patient
they ain't dying from corona virus
they are dying from
pneumonia/general organ failure
like the waitress said to Ricker when he ate the
watercress on his plaice and chips
you're not supposed to eat the decorations
prompting the question
unspoken
how many customer's meals had that watercress


here is an important concept
just as, as soon as, a sperm enters an egg
it is no longer a sperm but a part of a
zygote
egg plus sperm equals zygote
so as soon as a virus particle enters a host cell
it is partly
note partly - no conscious thought so
no intent
no partiality
it is partly dismantled
can't
go again
it's all up to the next gen(eration)
from then on
and so...
naturally the new particles
mass house invade
the next door cells
but eventually this
street party
comes to the attention of
the authorities
the immune system
already been on?
but the point is
pneumonia WITH influenza
plaice WITH watercress


if we set aside the big things
protozoa, fungi, etc.
that can infect us through
wounds
or be injected by insects such as
mosquitoes
the immune system has three targets
viruses
bacteria
cancer cells
viruses are only a problem when they can find a suitable
host cell
bacteria and cancer cells
need a food supply but not necessarily a host cell
viruses spread
they invade more and more host cells and
take them over and destroy them
bacteria and cancer cells
multiply
one cell
one lone bacterial cell
in the absence of an immune system
and the presence of food
in an environment such as
temperature, absence of UV light, etc. etc
to which they are adapted will multiply
like rats in a barn
and so will cancer cells
cancer cells are rogue versions of you so they
are adapted to living in your body
they, in the term
multiply by division
one lone cell switched to
proliferative mode
usually, but not always by
a foreign body - asbestos fibre, calcium deposit
cutting them off from contact with their neighbours
loss of
contact inhibition
they can't detect a neighbour so
they ' assume' a void or wound and
multiply to try to bridge the
phantom gap
most if not all
brain tumours
are
glial
in nature
they are related to
malfunction, errant mode change, in
the scaffold cells that regulate the
physical structure of the brain
not
hyperplasia
of actual
nerve cells
the immune system has what the espionage community would call
back passages
that would be
back channels
indiplomatic circles
we have a blood circulation that connects everything to
the immune system
but also provides nutrition to everything
including pathogens
the body also has a
lymphatic system
it drains fluid from all over the body and feeds it to
the immune system
and it contains little or no nutrition
and things we don't want
bacteria, viruses, cancer cells
wind up in the Lubianka
the lymph nodes
but surgeons
remove the Secret Police dungeons
when they find - breast cancer, arm pit nodes
and after that
your immune system no longer has any
comcentration camps
for rogue operators
what the chance of
cleansing lymph nodes without destroying them??
the cancer cells didn't
originate
in the lymph nodes so their removal is
at best
collateral damage
bacteria and viruses in your lymph nodes would probably
not lead to their excision



we know how keen
(Billy) Bunter ( of the Remove)
is on
Oxford University
the nearest we could come today is
The Oxford University Press
Lysosomes
unfortunately for Bunter
it is a monograph published by OUP
but written by
A C Allison
in 1974
when he was
Head of the cell pathology division of
the Clinical Research Centre of
the Medical Research Council
previous to that he had worked at what they then called
Mill Hill
The National Institute for Medical Research
and so to quote
just a little bit
In 1955, Christian de Duve
and other scientists working with him in
Belgium
gave he name lysosomes to a group of
microscopic organelles
located in the cytoplasm of animal cells
They are distinguished from other organelles by
three major functions they perform
1 They digest material taken into the cell
this may be food in th case of protozoans
or bacteria in the case of
phagocytes
slip out of quote here
phagocyte
Greek phagein to eat, kytos hollow
an amoeboide white blood corpuscle
that ingests - swallows - foreign particles
the big lumbering cookie monster of the
immune system
or the Kodiak Bear
capable of ingesting
fungal filaments
the phagocyte engulphs the foreign matter and
its lysosomes
digest them
return to quote
2 they break down parts of the cell
or even all of it (after cell death)
3 they release the enzymes they contain
outside the cell causing extracellular breakdown
as in
resorption of tadpole tails
end quote
our Ricker knows stuff
'cos he's read books
sperm have a special type of lysosome
they use them to drill a hole in the wall of
an egg to ge inside
none of that
glass tube and pointed stick you see on
telly
when they doin'
fertility treatments
enough
the point is
people and also people and
as Durrell would have it
My Family and Other Animals
are not
sitting ducks
when we are healthy
we have defences
very good ones
very good, not perfect




imagine there's a charity called
Cancer Research UK
imagine that at one time in their history
they had a commercial arm that
ran charity shops
and imagine that at one time they had two sections on their tills
and 'head office' bought in
New Goods
to be sold alongside the
second hand donated items
imagine a quite successful shop in Scotland
in Glasgow or Edinburgh
and each autumn the manager of that shop
had to do a ring around other shops in the area
to try to off load
thousands of pounds worth of
New Goods she couldn't sell
guess what they were
Christmas cards
why could she not sell them?
because her shop was in
a Jewish enclave
didn't stop Head Office sending her boxes and boxes of them
every year
no matter what she said
and who she said it to
so let's move on to a more biological example
some people breed rabbits
most people who breed rabbits produce them for food
but some people are
in the fancy
they breed rabbits because they make pets and they
can be bred for their appearance
and a classic style or breed of rabbit is
The Dutch
it has a particular fur colour pattern
normally they are mostly black with white bits
say somebody brings out movie that features a rabbit character
that has a Dutch pattern but the black bits are
brown
the breeders would suddenly have an unexpected new market for
brown and white Dutch rabbits
they would need to
SELECT
suitable breeding stock
NOT
institute a
MUTATION
previously unpopular and little bred from
brown and white Dutch rabbits would suddenly be
in demand
you design a medication that
kills the normal versions of a virus
you clear a niche
for a slightly different version of that virus that
never really showed up in tests because
it was crowded out by the version that
fitted to niche better and
hadn't before
encountered the medication
bring in the medication and
the minority version
blossoms and
you THINK you have a MUTATION



regular readers will know
we like to delve into
words and word meanings
the period of British History between
the two World Wars
is interesting
in many ways but today we would contrast three eras
the period between the
Napoleonic Wars
and the Boer War
was the period of
Industrialisation in the UK
the period of history from
The Boer War - the war between
the British and the Dutch
over South Africa
was the period of
enfranchisement
votes for working men
votes for women
the period 'Between the Wars'
the Interwar Years
terms for the period between
the First and Second World Wars
was different
some will recall tales of
The Press Gang
people being forced into
Armies and Navies
but the 'victims' of such pressing were
likely lads
people having their
furlough
shortened
furlough is, leave of absence
Dutch - verlof, permission
because the Great War
later known as
The Second World War
came after
The Industrial Revolution
and was the first war after the industrial revolution
it killed a lot more men - almost all casualties of WW1 were male
and so the protagonists introduced
a form of semi-universal conscription
people had reserved occupations if they were
in more modern terms
essential workers
World War I
was the first war in which
there were utterly unprepared patriotic call ups
followed by conscripts
outnumbering
'old sweats'
and when the army - in particular
carried out
Induction Medicals
they were utterly shocked at the
poor state of health of volunteers and conscripts
compared to
regulars
that sudden discovery of the
general poor state of health of
Joe Public
was the motivation behind the push
the endeavour from 1919 to 1949
to set up
The National Health Service

the word we are working on today is
malnourishment
1919 influenza pandemic
deaths due to
malnutrition
but what does it mean?
inappropriate nutrition
One Hundred Years Later
an infectious disease epidemic in the UK
due to
malnutrition
not
shortage of food
too much of the wrong food
all these Leftist activists
got a problem?
shovel some cash at it
give the benighted 'maw monay'
to buy processed foods
don't offend them by
teaching them how to
cook



We remember things you don't
most of you
a very very long time ago
there was no such thing as
HIV
human immunodeficiency virus
and no such thing as
AIDS
we forget what that stands for
could be
auto immune deficiency disease
or acquired immune deficiency disease
there was no AIDS
but there was a relatively expensive
biscuit
sold as a slimming aid
called
Ayds
gone
in an instant
and up until last year there was
corona beer
and other things with corona in their branding

4th May 2020

Here's the plan!
Whenever we update this file
the updated version will appear first
perhaps not by very long
at
www.our.st
Our Street

4th May 2020

many people are familiar with the line from
Monty Python's
Life of Brian
He's not the Messiah
he's a really naughty boy
what is less often reprised is the converse
a sketch where
John Cleese
dressed in business suit, bowler, brolly
and brief case
enters a terrace house
and two of the team are dressed as
fishwives, old biddies, old women
and one looks up and says
oh your boy's home
and the other attempts to
oh we forget the term for
stroking or chuckling a baby's cheeks with fingers...
anyway
and there is some comment about
oh hasn't he grown
who's a big boy now?
are you eating your greens?
and eventually the Cleese character in exasperation says
mother!
I'm Her Majesty's Secretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
please do shush
of course this is not the original script
but you get the idea
there is a similar story
probably true and oft repeated
woman leaves work on maternity leave
and a few years later
she feels it is time to re-commence
hosting dinner parties
and so she invites her husband's boss around for dinner
and she thinks it is all going very well
until she suddenly looks down and realises that
she is cutting the meat on the boss's plate
into tiny toddler sized pieces
and as a third in the series...
Ricker used to bank the shop takings at
the post office in Thirsk
and he used to chat to one of the tellers
one day she said
I'm off on my maternity leave now
off to do something
worthwhile
she referring to raising a child
some women - perhaps we are thinking of the likes of
the lawyer Ms. Allred and similar
perhaps we are thinking of our own
'dear'
Vera Baird
what shall we say
their experience of men
if they have any
is of a person who
isn't home during the day
to them - in their formative days
a man is a person who
goes missing for a living
how hard can that be?
women should be allowed to do that too
and then when they get into
the world of work
that isn't - like school - about
neat handwriting, addy ups, and takie ways
they decide that if they can
photocopy a script
these days email a script
and book a 'plane ticket
they should be allowed to
direct a movie
and they are oblivious of the
other women who have been
ankle biting their movie director fathers since birth
and making their own movies - at home
schools tell pupils
learn this text
off by heart
and you will be entitled to
rule the world
and those teachers seldom encounter the
recitationists they have produced
when they are still
stocking shelves
thirty years later
nobody should be surprised by the stories of
young adults
is the current version
Young Welsh and Minted?
young adults remembering how their teachers told them
you'll never amount to anything
because
your exercise book is blotted and
you forgot your lines
what gets you to
either the bottom or the top
in teaching
is sod all use anywhere else
and we can draw these two themes together in
The Life of Ricker
see, when he was young he owned nothing
he had the use of quite a lot
but his parents OWNED these things
and they had the right to
bin or sell anything Ricker depended upon
and after Ricker's dad died it all belonged to his mam
she had had a shop of her own
a sweet shop in one of the windows of
her parents' haberdashers shop in Tyne Dock
before she was a teenager
when she became a widow she decided that
although she would really like to own and run a
hairdresser's
she had a son and no daughters
and so
selling the house to
pay for her son - Ricker
to train as an optometrist
would mean she could
own and run an opticians' as second best
and Ricker had a degree in zoology from Durham University
so the training should be
a walk in the park
however her assessment of
an optician's being on a par with a hairdresser's
was a major bone of contention in the industry
the thing is
at the time there were
a lot of independent opticians and the Co-Op
ran a lot of optician's shops
to put it bluntly
at around 1980 in the UK
the majority of opticians
both the dispensing opticians - DOs
and the ophthalmic opticians - OOs
in work, had trained in
technical colleges
some time in the 1970s
optometry was introduced from the United States?
and optometry - being and optometrist - was
a graduate only entry profession and
the technical colleges were
re-titled,
universities
all of this was the 'official' line
the reality was that
as time went on 'the powers that be'
who were paying for eye tests and specs
wanted more emphasis of
detection, prevention, and cure
not simply
prostheses
this meant that these new university courses
introduced a boat load of
training related to the detection of pathology
and to remain in business as opticians
to be an optometrist
you couldn't be simply
a refractionist
a refractionist is somebody who can
test the optical qualities of eyes and
prescribe corrective lenses
up and down the country
there were thousands of little shops
labelled opticians
that dished out specs little better than
ready readers
the legalisation of the sale of ready readers
was probably calculated as pressure on refractionists to
sharpen up their game
offer more than specs that 'helped'
and so, most optometry students being
the sons and daughters of
refractionists
went home with all these tales of pathology
and mum and dad - mom and pop - refractionists
were ageing and under pressure
from the government who paid them and
Dolland and Aitchison who employed
anybody who was qualified
no special consideration for
keeping it in the family
and so
time and again young people
still in the early 80s on full grants
not paying fees
would get home one day and find that
dad had sold their
birthright
the business they had expected to inherit
to D and A
the man from Del Monte he say
on yer bike
last we checked
D&A is now lost as a brand
and owned by
Wallgreen in The States
and operating as
Boots Opticians
and the only other place you can get your eyes tested is
Specsavers
something of an exaggeration
but running an independent optician's shop tends to be
a second string in a household and very
high end
get yer prescription from Boots or Specsavers and
have it dispensed in a
boutique opticians
life's too short to wear boring specs
some will remember
Are you being served
on a day when Ricker was at another branch
the actor who played Mrs Slowcome
went into D&A in Guildford and asked if they had any
of her trademark outrageous specs
nothing in stock came near




we have been having a think about social norms
we are thinking back to the
dawn of the age of the teenager
we are thinking that some of the
first teenagers are now
generation curtain twitch
perhaps they are the people who
due to family pressure
missed out on the
Swinging Sixties
so to go back in time
as today
teenagers like - slightly noisily - roaming around in groups
they are simply spilling
playground norms
onto the streets
but as a group matures
within that group, gradually, increasingly
the question may be heard
do you know what's
green and hairy?
the answer was
a gooseberry
if three people
two males and a female
two females and a male
were walking along together
this was a single that it was time for
two of them to become
a couple
and the gooseberry was the unwelcome third party
and a lot of the activities of the
metoo movement bear analysis of
how sure are you that your ministrations are welcome
to either party?
is the elephant in the room
not fear of sexual exploitation
but
threat to social norms and conventions
are you
protecting the woman - or man
or, at a deep level are you defending the likes of
Arranged Marriage?
over and over we have seen a failed theory defended with the
nostrum
it's only failing because
it isn't being applied WITH SUFFICENT RIGOUR



a long long time ago
there used to be a thing on the BBC TV news called
KPMG
we don't know what the K and the G stood for
KPMG was a firm of accountants
when our Ricker was a little boy - under 11
his dad used to go to work
nd he would talk about his work
and Ricker didn't know what to make of it
there were the daily tales of
Paddy and Hill
but from time to time Rcker's dad - Tommy
would mention
Lancaster
and
Pete Marwick
except that Pete Marwick wasn't Pete
it as probably
Peat
Peat Marwick
was probably the middle bit of
KPMG
George was Tommy's chairman
and his sons, Hillary and Patrick? Paddy
were Tommy's fellow executive directors
and we assume from this distance that
Lancaster was a non-executive director
and Peat Marwick were the company's auditors
all of which is fine and dandy
but here and now we have a tale of Lancaster
it appears to our Ricker that....
oh we need to step back from Lancaster
St Peter's School, York
Ricker's half brothers
Peter and Gordon
were pupils at St. Peter's
the school that never celebrated bonfire night because???
Guy Faulkes was an old boy
we don't burn Old Peterites, even in effigy
Gordon, Peter, and Ricker all went to
Coatham
Sir William Turner's School
allowing for a time slip...
Gordon was a moron and got thrown out
and St. Peter's took him on condition they could
have Peter too
Ricker, some years later, stuck it out at Coatham
and so
St. Peter's got Peter into
Oxford
BNC
Brasenose College
but there is a twist
it was wartime - second world war
and BNC were billeted on some other college
you can work out which one from the next bit
but it may have been Christchurch
what we can tell you is that
BNC were billeted on the college that has
Tom Tower
and this is where Pete's career took its first setback
he was given the room to the left - right next to
Tom Tower
as you look up from the quad
and
all his time at Oxford
Pete couldn't study
for the sound of that
blessed bell
well, anyway that was Pete's excuse for getting
a lower second
and so
National Service after Oxford
navigator on a destroyer on the
Russian Convoys
probably not
Cavalier
whilst Gordon did his National Service before Leeds University
in the pay corps in Bournemouth
and then after Oxford and the Navy
Lancaster
gets the lad a job at
Maxwell Batley, solicitors
at the time they were at
Bevis Marks
it's a street in London
later London Wall, later still
Chancery Lane
the Lancaster story has a second part
Lancaster had spoken for young Pete
and the reports he got back were not all good
one day Lancaster said to Tommy
either at a board meeting or in a 'phone call
'if that lad of yours can't stop his wife
ringing him at work
they're going to have to let him go
Kari was in a difficulty
Pete was one of the brightest legal minds
of his generation
did the paper work for the merger of
The National Provincial and Westminster banks
The NatWest
and Kari was a nurse from
Tronyam - that's Trondheim - in Norway
so you see the rather tenuous link with the Russian Convoys
she had been working in London but had no links
with London nor England beyond
nursing and Peter
you are not wise to strand a typically
highly strung scandy blonde in a foreign land
it ended in more than tears
it ended in ECT
they had a boy and a girl and stayed married for
a very long time - decades
but ECT
stands for
Electro Convulsive Therapy
at least - so far as we know - she didn't get the full
frontal lobotomy
we could detail Gordon's
Hello Girl wife
Christ, this goes back so far into ancient history
right at the start if you had a telephone
it didn't have a dial
or a keypad
you picked up the receiver and a woman said
hello
hello, what number do you require
a Hello Girl
'spose that was what you picked up if you were
a squaddie in the pay corps, in Bournemouth
so Ricker's brothers' wives
put Ricker right off girls
right from the start
first kiss some podgy little kid called Pamela
when they were 8
first 'girl friend', they never kissed
Lizzie Brown when they were ten
things never really improved after that
as the horrors of his own family
played out against the background of
the girls in his class entering
neat handwriting competitions while he was
trying to pass the eleven plus
we should explain
the mixed gender primary school class were
half aiming for
The Boys' Grammar
and half aiming for
The Girls' Grammar
shall we say
gender differentiated entrance exams
the boys sat the eleven plus in the assembly hall of
the boys' grammar school
it was invigilated by boys' grammar school masters
who presumably marked the papers
so we assume the converse happened to the girl candidates
just an exercise in
which girls do we want to teach
boys weren't competing with girls
girls weren't competing with boys
and the girls' grammar got girls
into higher education perhaps even further education
about as often as the boys' grammar got a boy into
Oxford or Cambridge
these days
anybody with
basic secretarial skills
can have a First Class Honours Degree
and if they don't have basic secretarial skills
they are
special needs, vulnerable, on the autistic spectrum
so they get a Higher National Diploma in being very trying
mispelt
trying very hard
and an Olympic Gold Medal in
tossing the bean bag
they call it Botcha



we know that whenever anybody reads anything
the bit they don't read is
the caveats
we know that using analogies is risky
when we say
it's LIKE this
but it's NOT this

It's

NOT

this and so...
although a virus is like a sperm
the most important bit of a sperm
that a virus does not have is
a flagella
it does not have an
outboard motor
it does not have
independent motility
wherever it goes
something has to take it there
a scudding cloud of aerosol excretion
an inward breath from a new host
who got too close to an existing host
before gravity made that cloud
hit the ground
or a breeze swept it away
once in the new host the virus will look for
cells to parasitise
it will enter the first cell it lands on
it will not
go house hunting
to get deep into a host's body
the process the host should be using to
transfer it to the
fiery pit of hell
we know as
the stomach
has to go wrong and deliver it to
the Elysian Fields of
the lungs
some people have a problem with
the gag reflex
that is responsible for this
valve based control
as we are on what a virus is not
we will take on board slightly failed analogy that we are
aware of but have not yet used
if you have the good fortune to live now
in the era after the invention of
the microscope
you live at a time when
it is technically possible to create a
pollen count
because there is such a thing as a pollen count
the administration of amateurs
think...
can't we have a virus count like the pollen count?
pollen grains survive
around a million times longer than virus particles
and they don't exist within
gravity sensitive
water droplets
we can't expect to find
viruses in air samples
as we find bits of carbon and pollen grains
for all practical purposes
the source of viable virus is
breathing in somebody else's contaminated breath
BEFORE A TENNIS BALL COULD
Hit the ground
That quick, that close
However, indoors.....
consider
Legionnaire's Disease
different problem
bacteria in water tanks
being distributed to the air in a confined space by
the air conditioning
a virus
could not survive as a bacterium can in a water tank
but
air conditioning can
fight gravity
and keep an aerosol in the air
longer than in an indoor setting where
the air is
stiller
indoors - gravity
outdoors - gravity and breeze
indoor with air con - swirling air that
keeps a virus airborn for much longer



we do at this point have a little time to
consider the future
we have to recognise that thoughts building a business
in North East England
are dominated by considerations of
how will this sound in court
The local law enforcement are so short of
'real crimes'
to put into the databases they submit for funding
that everybody who
picks up the 'phone
to the police
or communicates in any other
'acceptable fashion'
acceptable fashion does not include
oi mate, over 'ere
instantly becomes a client
with a
crime number
or these days if the call is about
'a group of youths'
a dozen different crime numbers
for the database
whenever the
CPS - Crown Prosecution Service
there are locally several layers in law enforcement
plods, wooden tops
detectives
CPS
Magistrates
Juries
Judges, of various degrees
plods can add to the coffers in the mode of a
traffic warden, issuing a penalty charge
if the matter is one for the courts
normally the plod will
report the incident
and after detectives have had their
go at the time sheets over it...
the CPS will decide on
whether to prosecute
the decision will be based on the
merits of the case
did the prisoner break the law
flexible..
but the real decision is on
what are the prospects of conviction
and so most often the judgement is not of
what happened
but
who was involved?
women have to go a long way to get seen as
somebody magistrates or a jury would
like to see in jail
especially as it is very difficult to keep from them
the answer to the question
does she have kids
and this plays into the concept of
getting your retaliation in early
we have seen less publicity about the fact that
when a woman takes up with a man she is
entitled to access his
police and criminal record
for a man
even asking for a 'phone number
could be regarded as
stalking
there is an absolute assumption that
how do you know that a character in a
Disney cartoon is female
the long eyelashes
bat your eyelashes
the absolute assumption that
any character with long eyelashes
is pure as the driven snow
and so any sort of
web site based on
ideas and concepts
has to restrict itself to
things already in the public domain
However, in the midst of the
steamroller effect of
due process
there is no invitation to
demonstrate that something published
was already in the public domain


These very local and specific
web site names were set up and maintained
to promote the wellbeing of the people and areas
to which their names refer
in the absence of any sense that
it is safe to do business
under North East Law
a different strategy is necessary to have any hope of
making money
especially if you are deemed by the
local law enforcement and
educational establishment
as somebody who
should be down London
that strategy is to
select, own, and
fatten up for sale
a URL that some corporation may one day decide to
buy for a lot of money
our Ricker has a suitable URL
it has been hacked
we are pretty sure it was hacked because it was
involved in the data breach at
ebay
a very long time ago and the details
sold around
it may have been hacked because it is valuable
however, we are willing to invest a little in it and see
how safe it now is
the hack is quite a simple one
it is a variant on the
distributed denial of service
hack
instead of flooding the web site
it sends endless emails to an email address
over time
in this case
instead of a person sending an email to this address
getting an obscene reply
they get a message that
the sender's message has been rejected because
the recipient's in box is full
having time on our hands
we may explore this dilemma
that is whether to make any further investment in that URL


at the heart of this is the question
back in the day
as soon as a schoolteacher got a boyfriend
let alone got married
she was expected to 'retire'
and there have to be two major justifications for this
1 being married to a schoolteacher may be seen as
offering a man
privileged access to children
2 such jobs as were made available to
spinsters
single adult women
were reserved in small numbers for
women who didn't have a hope in hell of
getting their hands on a man's
pay packet
these ideas stand like
abandoned bridge piers in a river
tempting modern day people to build
castles upon them
if we refer to the
Home Secretary Priti Patel...
we have in some sense the category of
a woman who NEEDS her job
because she has no man
and therefore
to keep her off the streets
prevent her from becoming a sex worker
she must
alongside the likes of police officers
and
we forget, The Emperor's wife
be beyond reproach
as a probation officer once said to our Ricker
'it's illegal to disagree with an MP'
but only if the MP is female
the whole
women only short lists project
would need to have some element
preventing a
revolving door
having a woman in post
is seen as more important than
having a capable and accountable person in post
our society in general is affected by this
but the publicity falls to the
make weights
and damages the prospects and reputations of
the decent ordinary women who could
make their way without special consideration
and without having to pretend they don't like men




some of these datelines go just a bit wrong
because it is a faff to publish a file
and so we build up a few items ahead of time
as at 28th April we were saying this..
many 'cultural traditions' can have their origins lost in
the mists of time
and when they do they gain in gravitas - believability
and so we will tell the story of
The Salvation Army
we could be wrong about the name but
this particular 'church'
was founded by a married couple
who may have been called
Booth
they were not responsible for the name
The Salvation Army
they were a married couple and at one point their son
one of their sons?
was a stroppy teenager
he didn't want to work in his parents'
version of a Methodist Church
he wanted to join the army
so they re-named their church
The Salvation Army
so that he would stay
that much is interesting but currently The Army
has a motto along the lines of
Blood and Fire
we forget
what we want to point out is that motto or not
They had a slogan
the slogan related to their offer to
the indigent poor
the inhabitants of the most appalling flabella style
is that favella?
slums in the likes of London and Manchester
we now have the
Firebrand Preacher Sam
he says
Jesus said
You are fishermen
I will make you fishers of men
I will save mankind
and the heckler says
do you save women too
Yes, yes women too
Good, will you save two for me for
Saturday night?
that being the Sam
the slogan was
Soup, Soap, and Salvation
that's what the Salvation Army traditionally
offered to the 'homeless'
and from this develops the idea of
1 pack the bellies of 'the poor' with
carbohydrates
fatten them up
and 2
clean them up
so the God will prefer the look of them
and
if you can get the smell off them
they will loose a lot of their
aliments
you take an association with
God and The Bible
and weld on your own
untested medical theory
and after a hundred years or so
people assume that your quackery
is in The Bible
since nobody ever reads more than a hundred words
of The Bible at any one go or ever in their lives...
classically....
people mix up
quotes from The Bible
and
quotes from Shakespeare
and
quotes from random other sources
and we have no idea who came up with
cleanliness is next to Godliness
but it's a pretty universal
trope
that dirty things are infested
and
clean surfaces must be
antiseptic
we will introduce a bit of commercial promotion here
free of charge
we said about silver being
antiseptic and turning things black...
Carron Phoenix Bali Granite Composite
kitchen sink and drainer
Sanitized Reg. Trade mark
real granite composite embedded with
silver phosphate glass
to prevent 99 per cent of bacteria from
multiplying
on the soap angle
taking Booth Junior's approach into account
encouraging the poor to use soap
was more about encouraging volunteers to
walk amongst them to help them
with less recourse to
smelling salts
nosegays or whatever
rather than any genuine belief that
soap and water are the answer to
the plague
and in the tradition of
Chinese whispers...
washing just your hands
won't cut the stench by much