Sunday mumbling....

Walking down to the Abbey today in the bright sunshine was a pleasant change to the grey skies and breeze we have been having lately. What struck me as I walked was the amount of berries on every shrub and bush that produces them. There are thick clusters everywhere. Countrymen would usually say this presages a very cold winter, but we are currently enjoying an Indian Summer - though it is distinctly cooler in the evenings!

Mind you, Madam Paddy Cat is trying to grow the thickest undercoat I have seen on her in quite a while, and insists on getting very close in the evenings, usually where I can't move and she gets to keep warm. Mind you, at 18 (Something like 78 in cat years I'm told) she's probably feeling the cool even more than I am. But, of course, the planet is heating up, not cooling down.

I do wonder though, as I look about me at the natural response to the changing weather (We don't have a climate in the UK, just weather.) if the seasons aren't a little out of kilter with the calendar. Whitehall, in its wisdom insists that Spring starts at the March Equinox, but 500 years ago it was still regarded as starting in February, around the 20th when the lambs start to arrive (Formerly known in Roman and Celtic times as Imbolc), was regarded as the start of Spring. Similarly, Summer officially starts on the 21st of June - which in every book I have read is regarded as "Midsummers Day" - at least Shakespeare thought so. So perhaps the problem is that the scientists, Greenstrife, Fiends of the Earth and Whitehall should look at synchronising their calendars and then take another look at their "The Sky is Falling" data.

OK, time for another cup of coffee I think ...

Banking frustrations .....

The credit crunch has made the banks Uber Cautious it seems. I recently applied to be able to access my business account "online" so I could manage it while I am away from the UK. Guess what, it takes almost a month to set this up because they seem to have been smitten by the "Bureaucrat Bug" and now have so many hoops to make a customer jump through that the simplest solution is to close my account and funnel everything through my personal accounts. That makes a problem for my accountant. But, hey, someone has to subsidise his holidays - and I'd rather do that than subsidise the big bonus the Business Manager no doubt will get for making me run around and still not be able to access my account from abroad.

Running counter to the "Model Predictions"

I have grave doubts over the Met Office declaration that this year was warmer than last. I seem to have had to wear something to keep me warm a great deal more than I did last year and its been wetter too. My temperature measuring at home (South West Midlands) has given me a reasonably steady average of around 20*C, with very few days above that and most nights well down toward 10*C or lower. There was even one in August when I contemplated turning on the heating, the cat was complaining of the cold. Currently we have a North Easterly blowing which is keeping temperatures down to around 17*C here which is, in my view, quite pleasant. Not cold enough to need a jumper, not hot enough to be uncomfortable.

But it doesn't fit the Climate Model Predictions for the year. According to those I should have been basking in blazing heat, suffering mosquito plagues and getting my feet wet as the sea level rose with the Arctic Icepack vanishing faster than you can say Jack Robinson. So what is happening?

Well, over at "Watts up with that" they have posted the JAXA Ice monitoring figures and it seems that the Arctic Ice is growing at present, not shrinking. Reading further on that site you discover that if all the temperature data is examined and not just the selective data that proves the current media/political hysteria theory, the lastvten years have shown a flat line on the warming predicted. You actually have to manipulate the data quite a bit adding bits removing dips and so on until it shows any increase at all.

Any bets though that this data will be completely ignored by the Copenhagen Bun Fight?

Famous sailing ship

Now permanently moored at Travemunde, is the Passat, last of the famous "Flying P" liners built for the trade with Venezuela and used, after World War 2 as training ships for the future merchant seamen and officers of the German Merchant Marine. The Passat and her sister ship Pamir remained in German ownership after the War, one of the others is still sailing but is now the Russian Training ship Kreuzenstern.

Passat's sister ship, Pamir was tragically lost when caught in a hurricane in the Atlantic in 1957. She capsized in a powerful squall and only six of her large crew survived. A memorial can be found in the Church of St Jakobi in Lubeck, her home port where the smashed remains of a lifeboat in which twenty one survivors managed to find shelter form the centrepiece. Only one man survived from this boat.
The pictures show in order; The ship at her morrings, The Chartroom at the Midship's "Bridge", The Double Wheel and helm position on the Quarterdeck (This was the original steering position but in later service the steering was done from a position forward of the Midship's Bridge.) and the view forward from the Quarterdeck.

Lubeck again

The Holstentor, once the middle gate of the city's triple ring of defensive walls, the gate was saved by public outcry in the 19th Century when the city father's had begun to tear down the outer walls and the other bastions. The outer ring has been completely destroyed but traces remain in the form of the triple canal which encircles the medieval part of the town. The twin flanking towers are built on piles and lean toward each other for the very strange reason that the linking section which houses the gate, has no foundations and pulls the towers inwards.

The Holstentor is now a fascinating museum and worth every minute of a visit, especially if you include coffee and cakes at the Neideregger Cafe opposite the Rathaus afterward. The window display is enough to make you drool in excess, so take lots of paper towel along if you are a Marzipan fan and be prepared to have to take yourself severely in hand when you enter the shop and have to start making choices ....

A remarkable man

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the death of probably the greatest engineer of the Victorian period, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. His concepts and ideas were so far in advance of his time that he often had to "invent" and build the tools so that his principal idea could actually be realised. He built the Great Western Railway, the track for which is still in use, the Clifton Suspension bridge - again having to invent the suspension system and the method of construction - and of course, the ss Great Britain, now preserved in Bristol Harbour in the very dock in which she was built.

He was a remarkable man, an achiever of great things, and like many such men, had little regard for his own persoanl safety and by extension, the safety of those around him. He had a job to do and he did it, his ideas are straightforward genius and many of the designs he pioneered have never been bettered, though today they can be achieved more safely and with better and stronger materials.

He died very young, but his legacy is astonishing.

Clash of interests

Yesterday the results of an opinion poll were released in the media and the huge majority of those polled said that they wanted to see cuts in public spending and a reduction in bureaucracy accompanied by a shrinking of the Civil Service. Guess what, the Trades Union Council (TUC) today starts its annual bunfight and has kicked off with a declaration that they will "resist" any cuts to public spending. The Union that represents the majority of Civil Servants is already threatening strikes and disruption of public services if the government makes any cuts.

I'd call that clear proof that the Civil Service has become an expensive self-serving institution which no longer serves the people who pay for it. Assuming of course, that it ever did.

This attitude toward those of us who pay for these expensive "services" by the Trades Unions (Who themselves supposedly represent most of us in employment!) is informative. They regard our contributions to their coffers and to the profligacy of the Treasury and the various self-serving government departments as their right, not our choice. As soon as any reduction is suggested to the wasteful squandering of our money in mismanaged and usually incompetently specified projects in Whitehall the Unions rush to start threatening death, poverty and general mayhem if anyone dares to cut "services". Most of these cuts will actually improve services by cutting down on the number of worthless paper shufflers that have infested every public service. Once, the Fire and Rescue Services employed very few "clerical" staff, but in the last twelve years that balance has shifted as more and more "managers" have been parachuted into the command structures. Whereas in the past every member had some fire or rescue background and could, at a pinch, be sent out on some fire ground duty, that is no longer possible. Health services, police, the military - all the professional services have suffered this infestation of non-professional "managers" who increase costs - they are non-productive - by imposing complex bureaucratic procedures to hide behind and conceal their incompetence and ignorance.

Any government which strips out the bureaucracy caused by Labour's "nannying" legislation and meddling with "targets" and "accountability" which they believe can only be achieved by demanding an explanation for the use of every paperclip, can make huge savings by ejecting these embedded incompetents and returning "management" to the professionals who know what they are managing in their respective organisations. The myth that there is such a thing as a "Professional Manager" who can hop from organisation to organisation and "manage" it irrespective of their knowledge of what the organisation does or how it is done, needs to be exposed as the sham it is. Management is a function, not a profession, and only a professional who is thoroughly versed in his or her profession is qualified to "manage" others within it. That is the great weakness of the Public Services, they are "managed" by people who have no idea of how the work or function they "manage" is actually done. Huge savings could be achieved by simply cutting out the layers of "management" who do nothing but invent complex procedures which make doing any job difficult and near on impossible.

Sadly, the Unions, supposedly representing workers, seem to be less interested in ensuring more cash remains in their members pockets and more is stolen and fed to their biggest constituency - the so-called public services which should perhaps be relabelled the Public Waste and Squandering Service. A clear clash of interests in my book!