WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Tizer]

Our local council is proposing to shut down Taunton's two park-and-ride services because it's short of money. I don't know where people will be expected to park their cars when they come into town. Even if they build extra car parks the roads will be grid-locked.

[Big Kev]

Usual mentality is to wait for chaos to ensue and then spend more money to replace what was already there...

[plaques]

The first move is to under fund it so that you close it down to save money. the next step is to suggest that those now deprived of the service should get a taxi into town (privatization). The Council can now claim that not only have they saved money but they have increased employment and added to the overall GDP at no cost to themselves. A win win situation.

[Stanley]

Cynical but clinically correct P, I like it!

[Tizer]

I forgot to add that there has been an extensive development of housing estates on the east side of the town in recent years and now another big one has been passed by planners for the south-west side. Whatever could go wrong?

[Stanley]

Everything, buy two tricycles with large shopping baskets on them!
See THIS Guardian report on the aftermath of the case of the paediatrician Ms Bawa Garba who was reinstated after further consideration of the facts that were used to strike her off. What has become apparent since this flawed decision is that there were over 90 factors in the child's treatment that needed attention, some of them more serious than the lady's but it is clear now a junior doctor was used as the fall guy.
Also see THIS BBC report on the fact that Trump has had to do a reverse ferret and restore the flags on prominent US public buildings to half mast as a mark of respect for Senator McCain. Well known for his dislike of the man, as evidenced by the way he has described him, Trump behaved disgracefully and ordered the flags to be raised to full height. Significant that he has not been invited to the memorial service. Childish and disgraceful behaviour.

[plaques]

...Trump has had to do a reverse ferret and restore the flags on prominent US public buildings to half mast as a mark of respect for Senator McCain.

. Not quite as bad as digging Oliver Cromwell's body up and sticking his head on the flag pole on the Tower of London. Or General Franco hanging bodies of Republicans on gas lamps during the Spanish civil war. All to show the the people who is boss. Times never change.

[Stanley]

I agree P. Did you see the report that Franc's remains are to be removed from 'The Valley of the Dead', the fascist monument to their fallen built with slave labour?
John Wycliffe who was one of the early translators of the Bible finished his days as a parson at Lutterworth and was buried in the churchyard there in 1384. The Council of Constance declared Wycliffe a heretic on 4 May 1415, and banned his writings, effectively both excommunicating him retroactively and making him an early forerunner of Protestantism. The Council decreed that Wycliffe's works should be burned and his body remains removed from consecrated ground. This order, confirmed by Pope Martin V, was carried out in 1428. Wycliffe's corpse was exhumed and burned and the ashes cast into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth. (LINK). I always thought that was a particularly petty act.

[Tizer]

No wonder Trump has so many supporters reading his Twitter posts, there must be a lot of gullible people on Twitter...
`A fake billionaire is fooling people on Twitter' LINK

[Stanley]

P T Barnum said that there was one born every minute. I think the number is higher than that!
(This post is Kosher and from the Stanley Graham......)

[Stanley]

Once again it's Trump, this time attacking the World Trade Organisation. He may be carrying 'America First' and 'disruption politics' too far. One thing is certain he is making a lot of enemies.

[Stanley]

Having a free shop at the Co-op using my divi.
How much Jack's neck is improving. I spend a lot of time massaging the fibrous swellings, he enjoys it and I am certain it is having a beneficial effect.
A large, unknown dog bounding towards Jack in the back street yesterday as we came back from my afternoon walk. I was taken back to the first of the month and it was horrible. I reacted violently against the owner especially when it did it a second time. Lisette was in the back street and had the same reaction. It turned out that they are newcomers to the street, just moved in. I went down as soon as I had fed Jack and explained to them that I wasn't a nasty old man, Lisette had already explained the reason to them. They are called Lindsey and Adam and they understood immediately when my behaviour was explained to them. The dog is fine actually and they are nice people, no harm done and I think they no longer regard me as 'that nasty old man' up the street!

[Tizer]

I've said before that from my experience with the`autonomous' features on my VW Golf I expect there will be great difficulty in having both conventional and driverless cars on the same roads. This incident is minor but it illustrates the problems. Towards the end of the article it says: `A recent report by investigative technology news site The Information revealed teething problems at Waymo, the self-driving car company spun out of Google, where there have been headaches caused by what humans might consider over-cautious driving. The self-driving cars would stop abruptly in scenarios where humans might zip through, such as turning across a line of traffic. "As a result, human drivers from time to time have rear-ended the Waymo vans,” the report noted.
`Apple self-driving car in minor crash' LINK

[Stanley]

I saw that report as well Tiz.
Many millions of miles convinced me that a large part of driving safely was judgement based on intuition and experience of traffic patterns. Time and time again I predicted a move by a car in front long before they made any signal, if indeed they ever did! Little things like knowing that the only sure signal of intention to turn is when the front wheels change direction! How AI will learn that is a mystery.

[Wendyf]

Possible sighting of the Red Arrows this evening after 7pm on their way back home from Prestwick. I'll be watching the skies.

[Wendyf]

No sign, must have been false news!

[Stanley]

The fact that both Jack and I are gaining weight slowly after the Recent Unpleasantness.
The National Crime Agency estimates that there are 80,000 paedophiles on line targeting children. (LINK)
Something I noted yesterday was that the trees on the Green which have very shallow roots and suffered in the dry spell are losing leaves and turning to autumn colours early.

[Tizer]

Where I now live, in Taunton, there is an abundance of trees, many of them old and very large but looked after by the council or private owners. Unfortunately they have suffered this summer, partly from drought and heat, and the leaves are now brown. They may also be suffering from leaf miner moth caterpillars. It would be sad if they died but I've read that they usually recover the next year from the moth infection. I've reported the sighting of the browning on this web site: Conker trees

[plaques]

Chris Evens to leave BBC's break Link.fast show. Thank God for that. Sorry Julie can't please everybody.

[Big Kev]

B&Q and Screwfix are both resellers, for sliding wardrobe door kits, for a company called Spacepro. Considering B&Q and Screwfix are both owned by the same parent company my attention was caught by the price difference for the same door kit, it was £100 cheaper from Screwfix...

[PanBiker]

Chris Evens to leave BBC's break Link.fast show. Thank God for that. Sorry Julie can't please everybody.

Aye and we'll not hear the end of it until he finally clears of on the 21st December, hold on a sec didn't I hear him angling for the Christmas Eve show just after he said he was going?

[Tizer]

Reading this grabbed my attention...the first successful landing on Mars of a space vehicle from Earth was in 1971. That seems so long ago. We are used to hearing about recent Mars missions. Do you remember the British Beagle 2 mission to Mars in 2003 which was considered a failure because it was deployed from the Mars Express `mother ship' but there wasn't any confirmation of it making a landing at the time? It was detected on the Mars surface in 2015 but the radio antenna is hidden and unable to function. Perhaps Beagle 2 failed but, according to Wikipedia, the Mars Express orbiter `has been successfully performing scientific measurements since early 2004, namely, high-resolution imaging and mineralogical mapping of the surface, radar sounding of the subsurface structure down to the permafrost, precise determination of the atmospheric circulation and composition, and study of the interaction of the atmosphere with the interplanetary medium.' In July it detected `a subglacial lake on Mars, 1.5 km (0.93 mi) below the southern polar ice cap, and about 20 km (12 mi) wide, the first known stable body of water on Mars.'

[Stanley]

I've never see the point of Chris Evans...... Just me I suppose.
I once met one of the original founders of B&Q, he became a property developer when they sold out. He had a Red Ferrari with four exhaust pipes equipped with a matching secretary..... He was going to put up the cash for the exhibition centre we proposed near Ellenroad which never came off. The RMBC considered it too much of a gamble. Big mistake.....
6 monthly diabetic assessment starts tomorrow with a blood test.......
Yesterday afternoon a neighbour stopped me in the street and enquired about Jack which was nice. Then she told me that she had been watching Newton and me on a TV programme called 'Now and Then'. Does anyone know anything about this? I'd love to see it. I think it may be connected with a publicity drive Bancroft are engaged in. I saw a piece in the BET that quoted me at length from something I must have said or written some time ago. No problems with this of course, they have a lot of material of mine and I have told them they can use any of it as they think fit.

[Stanley]

I went looking for the TV programme but couldn't find it. One the way I committed the cardinal sin of Googling my own name..... Have a look at THIS, Daniel Meadows making a story about me......
I shouldn't say it but it's nice to know these videos are archived. It was a good time!

[Big Kev]

Yesterday afternoon a neighbour stopped me in the street and enquired about Jack which was nice. Then she told me that she had been watching Newton and me on a TV programme called 'Now and Then'. Does anyone know anything about this? I'd love to see it. I think it may be connected with a publicity drive Bancroft are engaged in. I saw a piece in the BET that quoted me at length from something I must have said or written some time ago. No problems with this of course, they have a lot of material of mine and I have told them they can use any of it as they think fit.

The TV reference could be the Daniel Meadows' videos that were posted on the Barlickers Now and Then Facebook page, Ian may be able to shed more light on them as he looks after the page with Gus.