WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Marilyn]

I have been a dishonest woman today.
Got served by a spotty faced Christmas Casual at the Seafood counter today, who put my order of Prawns through as Cocktail Franks, stuck the price sticker on handed them to me. I then passed them back to Febby, who put them in the trolley.
It wasn't until we got to the checkout that I read the label and realised we were being charged considerably less than we should have been. So we got a bargain today!
I shall enjoy them all the more.

[Stanley]

Maz, think of the number of times they have done the opposite and you've not noticed. These things tend to level out in the long run, The Law of Averages.
Ian, when supermarkets do exactly the same thing with non-perishable items they gradually whittle down the offer and somewhere down the line annoy someone. I'm with Wendy "Why prune any of them". You could make the same argument for the items that are articles of record or reference, they can sit there for years but eventually someone will access them. As for the bots, they do a good job, amazing how often we crop up in Google Search especially on esoteric items!
Tiz, as for posting and getting no response, that happens to me a lot and Stanley's View is a case in point. My attitude is if I have read something but have no valid comment I leave a smilie, that could be a good idea.
Bottom line Ian. Relax and let the site do what it wants! It has served us well in the past.

[Stanley]

Just in from Maz......

[Marilyn]

That is only one side of our house. They start screeching at 5.15 am. They poo on the washing and outdoor furniture and down the fences and on every path. We are quite lucky, as we don't have any foliage they feed on, apart from the grass they graze on at dusk. On our walks, the trees are white with Cockatoos.

[Tizer]

Are they frightened off by dogs? What about one of those electronic `cat scatter' devices? If that worked on the cockatoos you could make a mint by re-packaging them as `electronic cockatoo deterrents'. After all, a man who lived not very far from me made millions by putting a bit of electronic stuff in a box and selling it worldwide as a bomb detector! (Actually I shouldn't be laughing at that - people have died in places like the Middle East because law enforcement authorities stupidly bought the machines without looking inside the box.)

[Tripps]

"we cant make people post but a dozen or so regulars from a membership of over 750 is depressing, "

Indeed - but we are a very (self) selecting, high quality bunch.

I think there are just too many activities to keep people occupied, on and off the web. and it seems facebook and twitter lead the way for this sort of exchange. I agree to delete dormant members from the list. No point in pretending we have more than we do. If they don't like it they can easily rejoin.

I would welcome the return of the 'approval tick' or whatever its called. Nice to see that at least someone reads what you post and approves. I don't think the latest smiley covers the need. It just fills the thread with extra entries. I'm told it would be hard to do, and if that's still the case then so be it.

[PanBiker]

Not hard to do at all Tripps, but it would have to be compatible with this version of the board. We only have three mods on the site now, the post editor is one, gallery and an auto backup routine transparent to the general membership.

[Marilyn]

"schoolies" weekend here (Friday/Saturday/Sunday...they go home on Monday).
Three things are obvious to us as locals. (1) the local shops are closing early or not bothering to open at all. We were shocked to see even the Fish and Chip shop had "closed for a repaint" this very weekend. It is obvious that local traders don't support the influx of schoolies. (2) the rubbish around the town centre is alarming. Fast food containers and drink containers everywhere! It is just disgraceful kids! (3) the music from the open air concerts every night...gets a bit wearing.

I won't be surprised if schoolies pick a new venue instead of our town in future years. I don't think they get a fantastic welcome down here. They used to in the past, so something has obviously changed in the last 3 years.
But we really don't want them if they are going to leave rubbish all over our lovely town...the rubbish is so much worse than last year too.

[Stanley]

What exactly are 'schoolies'?
The cold clear night and the NW wind. No frost yet......

[Marilyn]

They are final year high school students who have finished their exams. They don't have exam results yet. They have now left school (depending on results of course as some may need to repeat!). So the town is full of kids all mooching about trying to look individual and cool. ( I heard a figure of 8000 but I can't believe there would be that many or we would be standing shoulder to shoulder!).
We have many extra police, ambulances, doctors, etc. there is also an army of vetted "minders" who patrol and advise them. One or two drug dogs too I suspect.
Most of them stay in tents in caravan parks up and down this part of the coast but it is really uncool to have your parents anywhere about.
The alcohol outlets are pretty busy checking IDs and throwing kids out...
Concerts with live bands in a "lock-in" situation every night on the foreshore green. Only for schoolies of course. Outsiders can't go in so there is no risk of the kids being preyed on.
It takes a lot of resources. They have a huge ambulance bus and doctors at the concerts.

I think they are quite safe. They have free supervised transport laid on too. Food outlets offer cheap food to schoolies. They al have wristbands etc.
But they are messy Devils. If only it was cool to put your rubbish in bins!

[Marilyn]

"Toolies" are discouraged. "Toolies" are youngsters who are too old to be school leavers but are legally allowed to drink alcohol and generally have cars. They hang about hoping to "pick up a chick".
They are generally trouble..
Some schoolies are very taken with and attracted to toolies though, and encourage them.

Listen to me. I know all the terminology! ( well I had hormones once too! I was mad about boys.... what a stupid waste of time! )

[Stanley]

Not too sure I can agree with that last statement Maz. On the whole my hormones have led me into good situations with excellent results leading to much joy. The occasional glitch of course but life's like that. I I could do it all over again I'd do roughly the same!

[Marilyn]

I would choose celibacy...( I think) ( maybe) ( quite possibly).
So many more choices and possibilities in life if you stay alone. ( I think) ( maybe) ( quite possibly).

[Tizer]

They are final year high school students who have finished their exams. They don't have exam results yet. They have now left school (depending on results of course as some may need to repeat!). So the town is full of kids all mooching about trying to look individual and cool. ( I heard a figure of 8000 but I can't believe there would be that many or we would be standing shoulder to shoulder!).

Do you mean they are kids from other towns converging on your town? Why do they pick your town? Perhaps you should should encourage 8000 oldies to descend on your town at the same time - that would soon deter the kids!
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The BBC web site has an article about residents of Grenfell Tower in London, the one that burned down, and it discusses why their concerns weren't listened too. Towards the end it says how there used to be a local newspaper that did that job. The Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle ran front page stories about Grenfell residents' concerns regarding the possible presence of asbestos on the site of the new school and about the power surges but the paper was closed down and their articles disappeared from the web. "The Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle was incorporated into a website that reports on 29 west London districts. Horrox's replacement was expected to report on three boroughs - Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham - while based in Surrey, an hour's drive away. Some residents of the borough might have been under the mistaken impression that they did have a local newspaper. In 2015 a free paper, The Kensington and Chelsea News, was established to fill the gap left by the closing of the Chronicle. But when I tracked down its reporter he explained that he was the sole reporter working on the paper, and on two other local newspapers - his salary was £500 a week and he did almost all his reporting from home in Dorset, 150 miles away. He made it to the borough only twice in two-and-a-half years, and the one story he ever published about Grenfell was from a council press release about the installation of the new cladding."

Edward Daffarn, a resident, says: "We'd been blogging for three or four years and you go back over that time there's a lot of abusive behaviour evidenced forensically about what was happening to our community, but it wasn't sexy so it never got picked up." The BBC article says, "For Edward, what was going on at Grenfell wasn't just a local story, but a national one. A story about invisible people in a society that cared more about celebrity and wealth than its most vulnerable residents. Close to tears, he admonishes the nation's journalists. "If you look back now our whole community of North Kensington, the policy that the local authority was taking every public space and privatising it, that that could be missed by the BBC, by Channel Four, by these wider news agencies... The question should be for you, why did you miss it? "Why aren't our lives important enough for you?" LINK

[PanBiker]

In some cases nothing has changed in over 70 years. We watched one of the series about the bombing in the East End of London at the start of the blitz last night. It featured the chain of events triggered by a single bomb dropped during one of the first multi bomber raids on London. It was a dud but buried itself in the basement of one of the houses in the rows of terraces. Policy (there wasn't much) at the start of the war was to evacuate a radius of 600 yards. Many who could go to family elsewhere did, others walked the 10 mile to Epping Forest and set up camp. The remainder were sent to temporary accommodation in a school just outside the potential blast area. There were about 600 of them, men, women and children. The system said they would be billeted overnight and then buses would be provided to take them to better safety. The buses didn't turn up. Bombing resumed the following night, more bombed out families arrived. No buses on day 2 or indeed the third day after yet another night of bombing and more souls packed into the school. The broadcaster and travel writer Simon Calder's Grandfather was a reporter on one of the London papers and he picked up on the plight of the enforced school residents and hot footed it over. By this time there were well over 1000 people in the school and one ARP warden and his daughter fighting a losing battle to care for them. He started daily bulletins in the paper to draw the attention of government to their plight but nothing happened. I think it was sometime around day 5 or 6 that the school took a direct hit which levelled half of the building. The official death toll was around 60 but reckoned after 3 weeks of recovering bodies to be more like 400. The survivors were eventually moved. It turned out much later that buses were sent on the second day but to Camden Town instead of Canning Town in the East End.
This single incident led to the opening of the tube stations for shelter and ultimately a more coherent support plan which morphed into the genus for the National Health service and the Welfare State.

[Moh]

One of the reasons I no longer post is exactly as said - same topics every day and any new ones disappear, this seems to be because Stanley feels he has to respond to every topic so they always stay on top.

[chinatyke]

One of the reasons I no longer post is exactly as said - same topics every day and any new ones disappear, this seems to be because Stanley feels he has to respond to every topic so they always stay on top.

Moh, the site is called ONE GUY so you would assume one guy would be dominant. We're lucky he is an interesting guy. I'm not into engineering but I find the engineering articles very interesting and informative, for instance, I now have gained a little knowledge of steam engines. It isn't up to me to say how things should be done, but how I see it is the more you post the more likely your topics are to stay on top and the more the site will reflect your interests. So please post more and give us some variety. OGFB could then mean One Gal/Guy From Burnley.

[Stanley]

Just to clear it up, 'Oneguyfrombarlick' was Doc. He started the site before he knew me as a protest against the dire offering that was Barnoldswick.com. He heard about me and asked me if I could provide him with some content and that was how I became involved.
You're quite right Moh, I do try to respond to the posts because I see them as conversations with friends and I was brought up to believe that it was polite to respond when someone spoke to you.
China is right as well, there's an easy way to put the topic you're interested in at the top of the heap, post on it.....
We must be doing something right somewhere.... I forget the original start date but it's more than ten years since and here we all are!
What grabbed me was that I got away with carrying those lumps of machinery upstairs without a single protest from my back! Yippee!

[Marilyn]

Wrap up of the schoolies weekend was "some escalated events of Cocaine use".
There you go...little darlings... Not!
I think it is time they found a new town.

[Moh]

Not all Stanley - many of the old regulars have gone. It used to be a fun site, but not any more.

[chinatyke]

Not all Stanley - many of the old regulars have gone. It used to be a fun site, but not any more.

Look at the braces, Moh, you can't get much funnier than that!

I'm a newcomer so I don't know how it was in the past but I see you've posted many times. Please join in the fun and share some of your own humour.

[Stanley]

I don't know...... How about if I take my teeth out and do some gurning pics? (I can stick my tongue up my nose......) And before you erupt Maz, it was you that disturbed Bodge with thongs and bras......
Two middle aged kids announce their engagement and the news programmes go into melt-down....

[Wendyf]

It's Panbiker's birthday! Happy Birthday Ian.

[Stanley]

Far more important than the Royals! Happy birthday Ian and many of 'em.

[Marilyn]

Happy Birthday, Panbiker.
Is it a major one?