Redcar Cleveland UK

20th April 2022

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31st July 2021

30th July 2021

there is a retired audio engineer living in Redcar
by which we mean Hi-Fi repair engineer
whose grandmother's sister would have been we suppose
his great aunt
and he is Martin Farrance
and she was EMB
we assume that stood for
Elizabeth Mary Bulmer
but she was our Ricker's next door neighbour
before the deluge
apres nous le deluge
so she could have been 80 odd in the 1960s
and born in the 1880s???
anyway she used to paint
and she gave our Ricker a couple of her paintings
and one was of
Coatham High Street
between the diversion of the railway
and the building of the north side of
Coatham High Street
High Street West, Redcar
so she painted this from memory or a photograph
and we will try to get a picture of the scene today
she being a Victorian and bearing in mind
the Americanisation of our language
we won't say what the name she went by was
quite innocuous in her day
we'll call her Auntie Mary
our Ricker needs his exercise
and for slightly complex medical reasons
this has to come in the form of walking
and today on his walk he
contemplated High Street West, Redcar
also known as
Coatham High Street
Coatham High Street may not be unique in this regard but
it is a street named - either way -as a
High Street
that has no shops in it
used to have a
Surf Shop
for a little while
it is named High Street in the same sense as
Upper Street, Islington
lierally high
not the street where the shops are
and High Street coatham was built on a ridge
of higher ground in the surrounding Coatham Marsh
what struck our Ricker today was
High Street West has probably the only buildings
remaining from the time of
Redcar and Coatham being tiny fishing villages
a lot of alterations have happened over the years but
with the eye of imagination you can see that
some of the little old cattages have
classic Yorkshire red clay pantile roofs
made locally from the red clay of the
red cliffs of Red Cliff Scars
and then
along come the railways
along comes Pease
and he builds with
white bricks and grey Welsh slate because
mainly because he is sending coal to
North Wales - the coal in Wales is in the south
sending coal from Durham to North Wales and
bringing slate back in the wagons that would otherwise
return empty
there's a split personality for a town
it takes fuel to turn clay into tiles
it takes little fuel to split slate
and net zero - well a bit but not much extra to return full
rther than empty trucks
so
a traditon dies
well, within the range of the
Darington to Saltburn railway line
if you are ever confused
High Street East-plaque on the wall of waht was
The Clarendon Hotel by the Town Clock
is linked to
High Street West by
Queen Street
although there is a bit of a dog leg
in the joint
in the form of
Lobster Road
and Coatham Road
is the Main Road
that runs parallel and to the south of
Coatham High Street

every so often the
grand panjandram
that is our Ricker
explains something and
absolutely KNOWS
people are defiant in the face of explanation
and yet he perseveres
Grand Prix
crudely
big prize
say it was
Blue Prix
a collection or series of such would
NOT
be
Blues Prix
it would be
Blue Prix
like
I have a black sheep
I have twenty sheep
like
that's how it is is
Thank you and Goodnight

29th July 2021

here's a question for Sheffield
why s such a proud city region as Sheffield
hell bent on retaining it's reputation as
The armpit of Yorkshire?

1st May to 30th September
there are restrictions on
dog walking on Redcar and Coatham beach
you may encounter wardens

as far as we know
before there were grey squirrels in Redcar
there were no squirrels in Redcar
so these have
1 found a previously unexploited niche
2 arrive to compete with
rats not red squirrels
we favour the latter theory
and
herons have arrived to compete with?
nothing
they have arrived to expolit a now far less
polluted bit of habitat
Locke Park

this part of Station Road is being developed as a centre of
the night time economy

and the whole run from the station
Redcar Central
as seen on Manchester station
destination boards
to the new pier head
Don't use sex as a weapon
virus - fragile not agile
Tees Valley - Vast and Proud
Those who can - do
those who can't - teach
those who can't teach - write books
or prepare on-line lectures
parents
in particular parents who either went to
a Russell Group 'real' university
or never went to uni at all
should remember that
most universities are
the employment equivalent of a
sink estate
somwhere to provide
sheltered 'employment' or therapy for
vulnerablw adults
students are
road kill
the move to make
so many jobs
'graduate entry'
was simply to provide finace for
schemes to get the inadequate
out of the front line
don't let virtue signalling
cause obesity
any political party willing to say publicly
we must weaponise the NHS
is capable of saying
we must have a cohort of workers in
brutalising forms of employment
mining etc.
to act as the shock troops of our movement

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Click here for previous blog
Click here for the 2019 blog
Photo Essay on Kirkleatham Ward, Redcar
Photo Essay on the return of
Zetland Lifeboat

Redcar. The town time forgot.

28th July 2021

setting aside the politician's
cheap trick
promising jobs
jobs that fuel immigration
politicans don't just want to promise jobs
they want to promise them in specifc areas
and so we come to
cutting off your nose to spite your face
The British - in the persons of their
wholesalers and retailers
have we could say
for the supply of a random item for sale
aside from re-cycling, up-cycling and such
three options
we simplify
Heckmondwike
The Tees valley
China
the government want manufacturing to occur in
Heckmondwike
they say
grants available to encourage that
but tell you what
if you import from China and commit to
importing into Tilbury
we'll pay you to builf a warehouse in
Hoddesdon
but if you enquire about setting up
in the Tees valley
we'll put you
on the naughty step
until the end of time
here's a thing
a perspective
in the UK
power is a side effect
people get into positions of power whilst
seeking popularity
the government has just bought
Sheffield Forgemasters
so that they can build
military submarines
in a tiny back street workshop
thirty miles from the sea
the government has a whacking parliametary majority
there is no way they need any Sheffield MPS
but people in government
yearn to be popular
hence we import from China and
so many people who are officially
in work
are mental health patients given
occupational therapy and pocket money
whilst working in
Heath Robinson
contraptions
up to a point
James Dyson
was the Heath Robinson de nos jour
but then we trotted off to Malaysia
came back and left his factory behind
so some similar nonsense
what we now expect is
for submarine shuttling
a ten lane motorway from
Kingston upon Hull
to
Birkenhead
via Sheffield
but due to a sat nav error
actually built from
Kingston upon Thames
to
Birkdale

27th July 2021

each Christmas, in the Uk, for many a long year
The Salvation Army
have run adverts saying
give us Ł19
and we'll give a Christmas hamper to
a poor family
back in the day
maybe fifty years ago
the Salvation Army
digression...
we are here to save mankind
do you save women as well?
yes
well save us a couple for Saturday night then
that's the Sally army Sam
the Salvation Army used to collect funds that they said were for
caring for rough sleepers and alcoholics
and after a lot of pressure from the public
the Charities Commission acted
they made a lot of trouble for the Sally Army because
they were, are, a charity and they said they would use donations to
help alcoholics
but the Charities Commission found - ruled
that The Salvation Army were
diverting charitable donatons to use to
promote Christianity
who doesn't like a free meal?
but
if there is a price
and that price is to have your ear bent about????
whaever the donor wants you to hear about
like a free credit check
to induce you to take out very expensive credit...
is it the deal you thought it was
at base
people who make beds
reckon, depending upon quality
you need a new bed, or at least matress
between every 8 and 12 years
so why does the rubbish on sink estates
include nearly new furniture?
because those haomes are
war zones
people from Eston come to Redcar and say
why can't we have a park like
Locke Park?
you could if you
didn't kill all the birds you see
and uproot all the trees we plant
the first Friday night after we plant them
Locke Park was created as a
make work scheme
to occupy the unemployed
but it was put somewhere too far away from where they lived
for them to be arsed to come and trash it
so it matured
as nothing does, on a sink estate
the hallmark of the middle class is
delayed gratification
the hallmark of the under class is
instant gratification
it is very difficult to imagine easier ways to
make money than
1 turning tricks
2 selling drugs to adicts
it is difficult for the educated person to know how
you solve an obsesity crisis by
giving away free food
how you can offer people a job that is easier than
sex work and drug dealing
and pays more
the trouble with sex work and drug dealing is
not that it is difficult to do
but it is
1 very competitive
2 unregulated
and so if the participants are
like in the Wild West
literally
Outlaws
people who are neither subject to the law
nor
protected by the law
violence will predominate
we have said that most women
in the UK one per week
who are killed
are killed by someone who's work is
dominated by physical domination
armed forces, police, security guards
these roles take people out of the
money treadmill
they have some money and a role in which
in a sort of Emperor's New Clothes
or more accurately
Caesar's wife is beyond reproach
situation
the belief of the power elite is that
if you allow criticism of law enforcement
the streets will run with blood
the latest concept
call law enforcement to account and
The Permanent Purge
will be the result
the idea is like
if you pick at that little bit of
loose plaster
the whole wall will fall down
ther s this Irish story
probably George Bernard Shaw
will you sleep with me for a million pounds?
well i don't know
will you sleep with me for ten bob?
what kind of woman do you take me for?
Oh we've estblished that
we're just haggling about the price, now
men are supposed to get their sex via the long term contract
marriage
women are supposed to get their drugs from a doctor
on prescription
the question is
to what extent
given the total impotence of law enforcement
in respect of sink estates
to what extent do
the chattering classes and
The Tory Party at Prayer
keep certain varieties of
sex work and drug supply
illegal
in order to have a permanent
Outlaw Class
whom they can feel superior to
it's dog whistle politics
legalise ALL forms of sex work
not just marriage
allow medicS to prescribe ANY drugs
they feel their patients need
not just the ones
BigPharma
is promoting at the given moment
and all hell breaks out
because everyody would die from
drug overdoses and sexually transmitted infections
or
because there would no longer be
an outlaw class?
like the Prime Minister who thinks
chaos is good
power likes to hide amidst the
fog of war
in a deliberate confusion about
when sex and drugs are
legal and illegal
rivals can be picked off
no sex - no children
no drugs - endless pain and disability
these things are not
intrinsically bad
they are just things where politicians
do that
I'll create 20,000 jobs
I'll create 50,000 jobs
never knew anybody with a job
but they are supposed to be
Good
so I'll promise lots and lots of them

25th July 2021

it was Redcar triathlon day today
and the winner of the
buggy push is...

there's a Nordic legend
if we've heard of it it must be well known
it sums up our Ricker's reaction to CoViD
and especially the
American Born Again Christian response
a couple go out hunting
and they leave their oldest tiredest dog
in the cabin to guard the baby
and they come home and the dog
welcomes them in high excitement
the father notices
that the dog and the baby are well but covered in blood
he kills the dog for attacking the baby
and then the mother tidies up and
discover a dead wolf
under the bed

25th July 2021

23rd July 2021

we have commented on
pease white bricks being a feature of Coatham
and some people will remember black bricks as a
style icon of the 1970s
well
the cinema on the sand is getting a
foundation layer of blackish bricks
and it will be wall panels all the way up from
the level just visible in this pic
there's a difference between
employment in
the public service
and
commercial employment
a lot of people buy
bottled water
a lot of the water coming out of taps in homes
is far from pure
some has a lot of calcium in it
in Redcar the water has a lot of iron in it
the water supplied from domestic taps is
OK most of the time
bottled water is as pure as any other foodstuff
working in the public service the priority is
this man must have a job
there is never any serious consideration of
this job must be done properly
recently an inquest jury decided that a tram driver had
done nothing wrong when he drove a tram around
a 90 degree bend at 45 miles an hour
the tram fell over
and seven people died
the speed limit on that bend was 12 miles per hour but
he was a man who needed a job
and the drivers have a union
if that same man had driven at 35 miles per hour
in a thirty limit
in his private car
and a child or pensioner had
stepped out in front of him
and been killed
that same driver would have been charged with
causing death by careless driving
because he wasn't
at work, at the time of the incident
we said that a lot of money was spent on
Kielder Water
and the associated tunnel in the 1970s
the England and Wales water industry was
sold to the private sector in around 1989
at that time a driver
drove to an isolated water treatment works
in Campbelford or some such
in the rural south west and
dumped a tanker full of an aluminium based
water treatment chemical into the worng tank
a couple of people died
no biggie
he was
at work
accidents will happen
especially when
getting utter fuck wits into paid employment
is the government priority
the idea of privatisation is
sacking somebody for incompetence in a
public service job
could lead to an MP or councilor
loosing their seat at the next election
but any fine imposed on a commercial company would be
paid by their insurance company
and the insurance company would not be able to sell the polcy
to a govenment department that had
Crown Immunity - from prosecution
so everybody gains from privatisation
except the people who get killed
and their families
sometimes a little help leads to a little betrayal
our Ricker has attended public meetings and defended
Northumbrian Water
but the are the quintessance of betrayal
at one tie they were French owned so perhaps we should not be surprised
most domestic water customers do not have
water meters
their bills are calcualted on the bass of
the value of their property
a bit like council tax
so the less water the company has to supply
the more profit they make
there is no facility to supply
raw water
to domestic customers
sooo
there is a maximum amount of water
the water companies are willing to process
and if they approach that limit
they say there is a water shortage
just the same as they are only willing to process
a maximum amount of sewage
any amount that threatens their profit margin
is dumped direct into river or sea

22nd July 2021

Jurisprudence
or legal theory
is the theoretical study of law
when they government say
data not dates
this an analogue of
jurisprudence versus democracy
democracy can be< BR> when it is
popularism
in Christian terms
give us Barabas
I'm gonna pardon one of your lads
you choose
jesus or Barabas
and the mob say give us Barabas
and so, at times we need to distinguish
popularism from democracy
the main steam media know
what buttons to press
how to galzanise virtue signalling
galvanise comes from Galvani using
electricity to make dead dismembered
frog legs twitch
in the British parliament laws are voted on and they
are essentially of two types
government business
and
Private Members Bills
in England it has become
quite the thing
if a daughter meets a premature and sticky end
to seek to have her memorialised by having
a law named after her
non of this was what we set out to explore today
what we wanted to discuss was
'it is a truth niversally acknowledged that a single man
in possession of a good fortune
must be in want of a wife'
Jane Austin 1775-1813
Pride and Predudice
our Ricker's dentist - at last count
had two wives
we loose count of how many the present
British Prime Minister has
in the world of jurisprudence
a married man in possession of
a furtune sufficient to support
two wives
is in need of a divorce
and in a more complex case
Michael Gove/
a man in possession of a wife who
is financially independent
is in need of a divorce
in terms of the application of jurisprudence to
family law
a woman is a spending machine
a driver of the economy
and she must have the cash to spend to
make the wheels of industry turn
and so she must be
married off
at the earliest opportunity
and if she has an employer willing to
keep her expense account topped up
she should free up her husband
for somebody else to
parasitise
in Islam we have a different paragigm emerging
in Islam today
a woman's place is in the home
and a man's place is in the temple - praying
and money comes from the people who
buy the oil
and so
by dint of the transmission of Moslem traditions into
British Left Wing politics
even in a country where the government has
no oil to sell
money comes - not from men - but from governments
and so
in 'deprived areas'
the ideal that is being sought is
pay a woman the equivalent of the city pay of a
successful architect or financier
for providing care for her own children
in her own home
we cannot see any other way to
end 'child poverty'
as measured by current standards

21st July 2021

if a body lives in Redcar
oft is the time they hear a boast from
a distant land
and sit back and smile
have a go at imagining what
44 billion gallons of water looks like
that's a fifth of a cubic kilometer
thats 100 sports stadia
flooded to a depth of
600 feet
and then search
Kielder Water
to see what it really looks like
and the looser is
Rutland Water
a gigantic muddly puddle
no depth to it
Keilder water isn't 600 feet deep
it's 170 feet - 52 metres - deep
one of those things you say about England
perhaps the UK
you are never more than 50 miles from the sea
Kielder Water is 24.4 mles from the sea
Kielder water is in Northumberland
but it was constructed in Northumberland in the 1970s
and it was constructed in a rather special way
it is in a very important extent
on two rivers
if it overflows
it overflows into the
River North Tyne
and as it does so
it drives a hydro-electic scheme
the scheme was opened by QE2 in 1981
26th May 1982 actually
guess what?
it's the largest hydroelectic plant in England
RWE Npower renewalbles
have the rights to sell the electricity until 2025
NPower? eon and
it's operated by remote control from
Dolgarrog
in Welsh Wales
Conwy or as in olden times Conway
but who needs to actually be there
it only produces 20,000 megawatt hours of power a year
a by-product
and the water that does that
ends up in the North Tyne
but then there is the
Kielder Transfer Scheme
there's this pipe
from Riding Mill on the Tyne
2 metres six or seven feet in diameter
steel lined with concrete
6.2 kilometers to Letch House
driven by six pumps
from there there is a tunnel
Airy Holm
31 kilometre of gravity feed to
2.91 metres diameter
like 10 feet
to Frosterly
and
discharges into The River Tees
at Eggleston
and
it has never been used
it is periodically flushed out
but the River Tees has never needed that support
The Wear
between Tyne and Tees
has had some support from the scheme
so if you ever have an idea for using
utterly unimaginable amouts of
Fresh Water
we got that
we got the
infrastructure
but we can't get the jarbs
'cos the votes are elsewhere
that was the grand plan in the 1960s and 1970s
if it's big
put it on the Tees
then the Pork barelling started
and now
Cleveland Bridge - and Enginering
at Darlington Darlington is in the Tees valley but
it's on the river Skerne
back in the day
a lot of the pollution in the lower reaches of
the river Tees
was added - contributed - by industry on
the River Skerne in Darlington

19th July 2021

hoist by your own patard
blown up by your own hand grenade
pulling the pin too long before you are ready to throw
vaccine manufacturers
from the government point of view
this is very British this
when the government wanted to switch from
coal to diesel for trains
firstly, they did not simply put
instead of surveying the market to
select the best design and buy it
instead they made an announcement
put out to tender
to anybody
build us a prototype
and then they ordered a load of copies of each prototype
and the govenment call this
not putting all your eggs in one basket
with this lack of clarity
each vaccine manufacturer is 'free' to
point out
disadvantages of rival products
and instead of driving people to their product
they undermine confidence in - in this case
the whole idea of vaccinations
in this case
nobody is saying
that vaccine does not work
they all work - very well
as each manufacturer promotes some
vanishingly rare side effect or complication
of use
if no manufacturer resists the temptation to
dis the opposition
if there can be no vaccine that can claim to be 100 per cent safe
some people will give vaccination a miss
if there was only one vaccine
nobody would have a rival product to promote
and nobody would think theycould gain an advantage from
pubicising any tiny defect in the
one vaccine that was 'our only hope'

our Ricker is old
the sort of
everybody that old is dead, old
according to TV shows
it is quite strartling how often
people in their 50s think they will
live for ever but wonder why
people in their 60s are still alive
despite being born in the age of steam
at the time
Ricker was young and he knew that if you wanted to
hear first hand from people involved in
historical events
you had better not cross question them
because they may loose the thread of
what they were saying raise the issue ever again
and so there was this story that Tommy would tell about
Ernest Shackleton
all that came through was
I met Shackleton at Grey Towers
where Sir Arthur Dorman lived, Pooe Hospital, Nunthorpe
and I gave him some money towards his expedition
but I got it refunded
Ricker ha always assumed that the refund had come from
Hodsmans - Tommy's employer
claimed as public relations expenses
but, however,
if this was after Tommy returned from the
Great War
it woud have been 1919 - 1921
so this funding could well have been for
an expedition that never happened
at that time
antarctic explorer Shackleton was
fundraising for
an Arctic expedition
and it fell through because a
new Canadian Government
withdrew thrie support Shackleton decided to return to the Antarctic
where he died and was buried
we have a little side bar on expenses
in the 1960
the two top people at ICI
Imperial Chemical Industries
were on
two thousand pounds a year pay
and
20,000 a year in expenses
because pay was taxed
and expenses weren't
still, income tax is 'paid by the employee'
and tax on expenses is apid by the employer
employees are not taxed on the cost of an upgrade to
'business class' travel or accommodation
so the question is
did Tommy's refund come
from the Canadian Government?
it's just an example of the contrast between
history as it was
and history as it was written

speaking of history being
Wot Churchll wrote...
and the
Cheese eating Surrender monkeys of Paris

Vive le Quebic Libre
Trudeau father and son French dynasty rulling Canada
see how Canada has a simple choice
France of the UK
America - too many options
stick with nures for fear of something worse
The Great War 1914 - 1918
The British Empire versus Germany
so
there were two main reasons why there was a
change of government in Canada
a change that destroyed Shackleton's plans
one was the people who grow grain in central Canada
objected to a tax on their product
the second one was
the chees eatng surrender monkeys of Quebec
objected to
French Canadian young men being
conscripted inot the armed forces to
fight Germany and liberate France

17th July 2021

a picture tells a thousand words
so here are two
one shows the south or Esplanade face of the
Cinema on the Sands
or
Pier Head
the other is of the south wall of the
auditorium
the movie showing space
within the building
there will be two even smaller screens
elsewhere in the building

13th July 2021

if you live in the North West of England
you probably never think about
where your TranasPennine express trains
take a nap between trips
one pic shows the train pulling off the siding at
Redcar Goods Yard (Morrisons store)
and the others show how much of the siding is empty
when the train is up the end of the siding
Morrisons probably - very likely
own the store and so
the 2 storey car park could make
a warehouse - no probs

11th July 2021

we do have a few ideas about the football
in absolutist terms
the fact that the BBC have chosen to promote sales of
Three Lions
as opposed to Vindalu
could mean that they regards this as a
warm up tornament for the next
World Cup
Jules Rimet
had nothing to do with the Euroes?
if England had been playing
France
where Rimet was the FFF president for 20 odd year..
anyway
the concept of Football coming home relates to
football not the trophy
to the idea that England invented football
in 1863 Association Football
and
Rugby Football
split into to different orgnizations
the first ever soccer match was played between
Barnes Football Club
and
Richmond Football Club
at Mortlake on 19 December 1863
rugby a game for thugs played by gentlemen
soccer a game for gentlemen played by thugs
it's all about the rules
almost nobody plays rugby
without a referee
almost nobody thinks about
who will be referee when they decide on
a kick about
the core difference is
soccer is football - no hands unless you ae in goal
rugby is a carrying game
but kicking is more for set pieces and
as in soccer , for penalties of various sorts
in soccer the ball must go into the net for a score
in rugby, the ball must be
touched down
hand on ball as it hits the ground over the line
no heading - not banned - in rugby
there is a possibility that soccer will evolve into a
no heading game
or there may be another split
the idea that only the boots can contact the ball
has some traction - especially on medical grounds
and
with the devlopment of slow or walking football
for elders
in some formats the ball will always be moving
too slowly for heading to be very effective
we have noted the British courts trying to
cash in on the Euroes
by bringing in determinations in the
Vardy- Roony case
Rebekah Vardy Coleen Rooney
Wagatha Christie libel case
possibly, just possibly
this time the football has been interesting enough
for the media not to have felt the need to
spawn another generation of
WaGs
wives and girlfriends
perhaps there is some recognition that
girls can PLAY football
and not just go fishing for a
male footballer to parade in the lible courts
and finally
at last we have reached a match where
there seems to be no mention of
lets let Ukraine win, to piss of Russia
tell the snowflake England team it would be
cruel to beat a team that had suffered an injury
nothing about plucky Italy
they need a break
very heartwarming that

8th July 2021

The Cinema in the Sands
isn't a cinema
it's a
Pier Head
with three confernce rooms
that can be used to show movies
and that is no bad thing

7th July 2021

we were going to make a simple comment about
deprivation
but we researched it and it got more complicated
and that means we don't know quite how to put this
the chief medical officer for England
or some such
has just said that
CoViD has revealed that the distribution maps for
morbidity - ill health
are today almost identical to those of
many many years ago
that is fact
one factor that has been removed from this equation is
air pollution
not exactly removed but blurred
pollution related ill health is now largely linked to
road traffic
and places not deprivation hot spots are becoming
morbidity hot spots
we will divert here to the fall of the concept
dillution is the sollution to pollution
it died on nine eleven
in fact its death was possibly the most dramatic
result of the attack
in some sort of convoluted way
oil producers attacked their customers
and in effect wounded their product
often when some great truth dawns on the powerful
they are quite careful to keep it quiet
what happend
wo happen wo happed Muskie
the vision impaired side kick used to say
what happened was that
because the attackers used airlines as
kamikazi
weapons
all commercial flights were suspended
in the USA at least
so?
so, despite being up in the sky
up in all those cubic miles of free air
when the 'planes stopped flying
carbon related pollution quantities
at ground level plumeted
a similar but less dramatic fall has occured
during CoViD
nevertheless
people in deprived areas
don't - in the UK - have a lot of motor vehicles
so we revert to our first theme
we set out to discuss
Robert Nesta Marley OM
OM stands for Order of Merit
6 February 1945 11 May 1981
considered one of the poneers of reggae
he fused reggae with ska and rocksteady
in his London and Rastafari period
he and The Wailers released
The best of the Wailers
and we will say that he re-located from Jamaica
to London
as a result of a failed assasination attempt
he sold 75 million records worlwide
his most miss understood song title and lyric was
no woman no cry
it did not mean
steer clear of women and you'll be cool
it was a contraction of
no woman, don't cry
Get up stand up - stand up for your rights
Jammin' I'm jammin'
Satisfy my sould
all world hits
however
One Love
was his greatest hit
God's - Eric Clapton's - only number 1 single
I shot the sheriff
but I did not shoot the deputy
was a Bob Marley cover
having established that Bob marley was a
rich successful man
you will have noted
he died young
very young
and his famous last words
possibly not his actual last words but
his last words to one of his many children
Ziggy
where have we heard that name before?
Ziggy Stardust
this was Ziggy Marley and
Bob said to Ziggy
Money can't buy life
and at one level we see this as a tallisman for
give 'em maw monay
not being the complete answer to deprivation related
high morbidity rates
however, if we peer a lttle deeper
Bob Marley died from something that
wasn't in most medical textbooks of the day
he died fro a late stage melanoma - skin cancer
BUT
this was
well to recant a little
when he died
being so young his remains were examined
in his dreadlocks were found
19 different species of lice
but to the thread
he died from a melanoma
but it as
acral lentiginous melanoma
and what is different about that?
well
it is a condition where skin that is normally
pale - even in the most pigmented of black people
that is
the plams of the hands
the sole of the feet
and the beds of the finger and toe nails
and so
in a way
pink skin turning brown but in doing so
matching the surrounding skin
and not triggering alarm
and that brings us to the issue of
morbidity maps
we could say
that families and communities where
ill health is rife
will be slow to recognise early signs
and not trouble the doctor
many probably die from ignoring
a smoker's cough
the cough is seen not as a warnng about cancer
but as a badge of honour
the signifier of a tough chap who can
smoke without throwing up
so two things here
people in deprived areas may have diseases that
have not been fully researched
people in deprived areas can be very
independent
chippy
unwilling to be talked down to by toffs

The Cinema on the Sands
now has its lift shaft
so you would enter the lift in the foyer
and exit on the roof terrace
but not on the roof
not even the lower roof
that is
the roof terrace will have a roof
what access to that top roof there will be
we don't know but it will be
via the stairs ate the east end
the foyer and lift being at the
west - River Tees - end

5th July 2021

dates confound us some times
we think that some time after the invention of the
bikini swim suit
there was a backlash
and signs went up on french beaches reading
slip obliger
it mean that if you wore a bikini you
had to wear a top over it
so in future there may be
masque obliger
signs
French local authorities are much more likely to
make weird by laws than those in the UK
what is interesing is
almost nobody objects to a female
getting her legs out
including her bum
but tits have been a problem in the past
so how will
masque obliger
sit with
pas de burkini?
our Ricker does not give a damn
about what other males think but
for him
tights and a crop top
take the prize
it's not a fetish but
he'd rather see your
belly button than your nipples
anything above the belly button is
a climbing frame for toddlers

a couple of things about
going topless
during pregnancy
in a lot of cases but not all
the nipples and the entrance to the
birth canal
darken
become more deeply pigmented
clearly that has nothing to do with
sporting a bare mid-rif and tummy button
bare mid-rifs reveal stretch marks
the opposite tiger stripes of unpigmented skin
as the skin of the tummy stretches in the
latter part of pregnancy
new skin has to be made so quickly that
stripes of it the new bits don't get the
amount of melanocytes the slow growing bits got
in the UK
lots and lots of people had babies taken away from them
because they were unmarried
famously the new wife of MoMawlam's widower - an MP
she campaigned against toplessness
before we knew she had been an unmarried mother
Jon Norton
Clare Short
we accept that Ms Short's baby was given up
for adoption despite her being married to
the father for a short time after the birth
her paternal cousin
Martin Hayter Short
was in a lot of famous movies
Father of the Bride, Mars Attacks
The Santa Clause 3
Three Amigoes
and there's the thing
married at least three times and
thinking diplaying her post partum nipples would
spoil her chances
how do you get pregnant to a fellow student at Keele
at the age of 17?
get raised by an Irish Catholic family...
and so
topless sunbathing is
the mass market version of
Harley Street virginity tests...
like, the lateral flow version
might not show you're a virgin
but some indication you ain't got
a kid tucked away somewhere

sometimes we take the time to
state the bleedin' obvious
lots of people have heard of
The last night at the Proms
it's around 11th September
but do you know what the Proms are and
why they were started?
Henry Wood started light musical entertainment
at cheap prices in the summer time
July to September
because
all the toffs who went to the opera
and the other musical shows were
on holiday in Europe
now shows stay open in the summer because
the tickets are bought by
foreign tourists
except not this year so
opening theatres in the summer with no
foreign visitors
not good
so let's get some compo from the government
for having to shut
when we have sold no tickets...
The Inter city 125 express train was introduced
onto UK rails in
1976
construction having begun the year before
a power car at each end with no passenger seats
a 'rake' of coaches or mark 3 carriages in between
there were either 7 or 8 coaches for passengers
we do not remember how they were divided into
first and second class but they were open carriages
all seats together no partitions except at
the end of carriages and between 1st and 2nd class
we are gettng to a point about
laws and advice
in French there are two signs painted about the place
one says
pas de fume
and the other says
defence de fume
of all the coaches on an Intercity 125
all but the one at the northen end
sorry the down end - farthest from London
all the open carriages had
a smoking end and an non-smoking end
the down end carriage was all no smoking
in a sense
all but the last coach were pas de fume
no smoking
at one rather ill defined end
one carriage was
defence de fume
smoking prohibited
and so the idea of
nudging the people towards a target
in theory
over time
in response to public demand
more and more of the train would become
no smoking
transition fro
smoke here don't smoke there
to
don't you dare smoke
anywhere on our land
so all this CoViD stuff was
shall we say
more of an emergency than suddenly discovering
smoking kills
CoViD kills
and we start in the spirit of old Draco
Draco from whom we get Draconian
was 7th century Greek
first person to be elected to
write down laws
before that you went to court and they decided
what was illegal about what you had done
in speeches - nothing written down or
simply according to the conventions of
blood feuds
UK society had a reversion to
preDraconian dispute resolution with
duels and duelling pistols and swords
despite the risk of death
the aim - especially with rpaiers or swords
was to injure not kill
to disfigure
hence
deuelling scars
worn with pride
a little like tatoos
you start to try to impose
the rule of law
with Draco in the 7th century
and people are still duelling
in the early 20th century
and here's the point
'all this' knife crime
people - young men from minorities
die because nobody has shown them
how to
gain satisfaction in a dispute
any other way
how can you adjudicate in a court of law
in a dispute over an illegal act such as
a drug deal?
if less things were
outright illegal
the legal system would be in a better position to
keep the peace
the homicide detective says
i don't want to hear about his pilfering
I want to know what you know about this killing
the individual cop can say that
but the justice system cannot
in a sense
the conversion of endless grivences from
civil matters to criminal matters
boils down to a
justice system equivalent of the founding of
the NHS
the NHS means you don't have to hire a doctor
the criminalisation of trivia
means you can call the police
instead of hiring a lawyer

4th July 2021

Happy Birthday America
Michael Gove
He's not the Messiah
he's a very naughty boy
actually he is a
petulant, I walked through a corn field
self important little boy

and the England Croatia performance
perfect except that
the defence track back too much
BUT
they have to balance
doing that against referees who will
ignore simulation
there should be recall if the tackled
player plays on
can't undo the free kicks but you can recind yellow cards
another little boy in the public eye is
Cav
The Manx Missile
his achievements in the
le Tour de France
may rival those of the England soccer team
setting that aside
these 'ill educated' medics
feet of clay
a surgeon visits a school to give a careers talk
and say
as The Bard said.....
and proceeds to quote the Bible
and The Bard is Shakespeare
feet began to turn to clay
and so this was Powys on Marr
Marr is saying mandatory
and Powys is saying mandated
Marr correct
it is quite interesting though
mandate - order a precept a prescript of the Pope
but here's the thing
a commission to act as representative of a people
and so, classically,
the Vice-roy of India
would have a mandate to rule India
on behalf of
The British People
in the person of the monarch
The Empress of India - Victoria
thast's the mandate
like a copper's warrant card
YOU are mandated to do THIS
like a driving licence
something that is
mandatory or mandatary
is something you have to do
because you have been told to
by the person with the mandate
I am mandated to arrest you for drunk driving
it is mandatory that you do not drive if over the limit
just sayin'

1st July 2021

The project to build a
Cinema in the Sands
on Coatham Beach, Redcar
has split into two phases now
the east end now has a roof
not a completed roof but the sheet steel
the west half will have the big screen
at its west end
will have a lift
the lift will only take people from the
Esplanade level to The Gods of the theatre
but that is all that the patrons would need
they will have to use stairs to get to the
roof terraces
it will be hence, three movie theatres and
a roof terrace which may well be a restaurant
two roof terraces with sea views
overall
the Redcar equivalent of
a Welsh sheep tied to a lamp post
and
The Inn Collection
seem to be progressing with their
RKade replacement
Majuba Road hotel
it's in planning
whether the company has bought the
land or the lease on the land
before getting planning permission we don't know
there's still a
Lease for Sale
board on the site

30th June 2021

if you're really really old
and yet somehow still alive
and you grew up anywhere in the world
but especially in the US or UK
you may be able to dredge out memories of
Meadowlark Lemon

Michael Jordan
Jordan Air
described Meadowlark
birth name Meadow Lemon
as
a true national treasure
and a personal inspiration in Jordan's youth
from 1986 a born again Christian minister
but
we will dispense with dates
in the Roaring twenties
people 'going to the dance' fell away
and ahotel ballrom hired a bunch of
basket ball players to give
exhibitions
right now there is conflict over
collee sports players being amateur - unpaid
and their coaches being on fabulous money
anyhow
slowly over time
the NBA emerged
National Basketball Associaton
for a long time it did not have any black players
they were eventually to dominate but
the entertainment troup in that hotel
in the mean time
developed into
The Harlem Globetrotters
and they were essentially two teams
it was a long time before they admitted a Hispanic player
they toured the world
The Harlem Globetrotters
took with them an opposition team
and they played exhibition matches
and Meadowlark Lemon
was their star
their clown
Meadowlark died around 2015
in 2021 the trotters applied to be
affiliated to the NBA
this is all very well but what do we want to say?
regarding the
European Superleague
in many ways the backeres of that defunct - stillborn -
concept
were trying to develop
major European Soccer clubs into
a league of Harlem Globetrotters equivalents
playing a tour of exhibition matches
and that speaks to the recent
UEFA
England Germany match
it was
a competitive match
not an exhibition match
so a lot of it was
rather boring
not quite as boring as the
England Scotland match, but boring
compared to a harlem Glabetrotters match

the addled brain of the Ricker was trying to remember another topic
yes
so
around ten years ago
maybe for a decade
many housing estates were plagued by
burglar alarms that seem to be for ever sounding
those days are past for the most part
with a few car alarms breaking the peace
people hese days have
CCTV and video door bells
the idea here is
for a long time
home security had quite an edge
street or terrace houses
had no vacant land in front
and a yard behind
that yard would have a brick wall
six feet high - 2 metres
maybe two and a half or three
in those days security consisted of
embedding shards of glass in cement
along the tops of those walls
plastic retatin versions still feature
at some commercial premises
the property owner is now liable for any injury
caused to a burglar, so they have become somewhat
blunt toothed
the point here is
the essence of the concept of
rape
is to deal with
unplanned pregnancy
as we have said before
people 'trying for a baby'
have to make other arrangements
but all the range of contraceptive measures are
the CCTV of birth control
and the concept of
rape
is akin to reverting
postapopalytic style
to shards of glass in the wall tops
trying to extend the concept of rape into
downright crash for cash

28th June 2021

below... we have the unresearch
glaucoma schtick
so we have an update
there is a drug
lantanoprost
sold as Xalatan
it is a glaucoma med that
does not suppress aqueous production
it lets the aqueous out through a
back door
loosens or spread the fibres of the
ciliary muscle to let the aqueous filter out
people are beginning to research glaucoma
a theory is developing that is that
as the lens stiffens - cataract
the ciliary muscles cannot flex
and a secondary function
secondary to changing the shape of the lens
a secondary function of the ciliary muscle is to
pump aqueous out of the eye into the
Schlemm's canal
the difficulty here is that a lot of the drainage is
through cells
what often collects in the meshwork is
bits of pigment from the iris
there are not many human albinos
somebody could get a PhD out of finding out whether
albinoes get less glaucoma
what the aqueous does is
bathe the
structures of the eye that have no blood vessels
in a sort of lymph that feeds them and takes their rubbish away
how many T cells of the immune system are in the meshwork
to remove infective material
our Ricker for one, does not know
because the 'immune system' T lymphocytes macrophages
are general grbage gobblers
not just infection fighters
bottom line, as it stands
if you get cataracts
you are likely to get glaucoma in train
because of
ciliary muscle inactivity
so
the base simple advice is sound
as long as you can
exercise those muscles
don't rely on fancy lenses all the time
don't restrict your looking to a single distance
such as to a digital device
the drug is US and Australia licenced

larus hyperboreus

is a large gull called
the glaucus gull
it is the second largest gull in the world
and breeds in the arctic
well
it breeds anywhere
North of Mexico
excluding Southern Calfornia
but not south America, sub Saharan Africa
South Asia Australia
she's a Northern girl
but not necessarily
a 'fridge dweller
they are called glaucus because
they are greyer
than other gulls
GREYER - more grey
some people may think of glaucus as more a sort of
greeny grey
and so my darlings
why today?
this week is
amongst a host of other things
glaucoma awareness week
and we are going to try to convince people that
sometimes
we get over run by a
solution in search of a problem
every biological scientist at some time
very many scientists including
particle physicists
have tried to argue how their particular
specialism can be applied to
cancer research
because that's where the money is
and so
we have the basic technologies to detect and treat
glaucoma
and we have the hangers-on
today's word you have never heard of
tapetum
ignore the use in botany
tapetum is
Latin for carpet or tapestry
forget Egyptian Queen delivery vehicle
Cleopatra to Caesar
today we shall be mainly
forgotten the comic reference there
today we shall be mainly referring to the
tapetum lucidum
a reflective tissue layer associated with
the retina of some vertebrates
we have reached a way point in our arguement
so with a lot of hamsters
and albino rats and other pets
eyes?
red
bright red with no pigment in their
iris etc
cats
cats' eyes
not just in the road
shine out bright green
not red at all
green eyed monster , jealousy like vengeful cats
in flash photography of people we can get
red eye in essence
glaucoma means
no red eye
no matter what you do
the retina is not red
because it is blanched
it is not green like a cat's
but it is
pink at best
but essentially
grey
it is grey because
there is little or no blood
circulating across the retina
and there are three causes
1 blockage of the retinal artery,,,
2 open angle glaucoma
3 closed angle glaucoma
the first is a sort of mini-stroke
the third is
caused by
prolapse of the iris
we need to step back
the structure of the eye
retina - screen in a cinema - in reverse
not displaying images
collecting them
pathologist's anecdote here
when guns with bullets
as opposed to shot that scatters
became murder weapons
some victims presented with
lethal wounds and a bullet in each eye
on the basis that
this was probably due to the fame of
Spillisbury
criminals thought that
the retina retained an image of the last thing seen
at point of death
rather as a bright flash remains because
a pattern of rhodopsin remains for a few seconds
so that a flash can appear to be
longer - of greater duration than - it was
back to the plot for goodness sake
retina at the back
a jelly core that prevents collapse
a lens
a watery fluid that does the same for
the area between the lens and the cornea
the cornea is the window of the eye
thus corneal transplant
if the window is damaged
a different bit - the lens
replaced if the problem is
cataract
cataract come from waterfall
you feel you are looking at the world from behind a waterfall
closed angle glaucoma
prolapse of the iris
the iris is the coloured ring
that is not coloured in albinoes
the iris is surrounded by a
ciliary body
it secretes the watery stuff that's between
the lens and the cornea
and this watery stuff - the aqueous
or aqueous humour
is constantly secreted by the ciliary body and
drains through the
trabecular meshweork
it flushes and irrigates the inside of the eye
tears for indoors
the front of the cornea has a
tear layer
the back of the cornea has
aqueous humour
the tears should not actually contact the cornea
because the conjunctiva
conjunctivitis?
th conjunctiva with it's IT'S blood vessels
keeps the moisture of the cornea in
cloed angle glaucoma is prolapse of the iris
the iris slumps into the 'angle'
the place where tht draining trabecular meshwork is
like a labradore dog
lying against the living room door
and trapping the cat in the kitchen
aqueous continues to be secreted
but cannot drain
and the pressure builds and the
blood vessels of the retina
have the blood squeezed out of them
and the retina can no longer do
red eye
it becames blanched
it starts to look grey
or glaucus
open angle glaucoma is different in cause
but similar in course
regard the trabecular meshwork as
a screen door
imagine
snow or leaves being blown up against
a screen door - blocking it
so n either of these cases we can do surgery
these days often laser surgery
to unblock the drains
what we tend to do
is
use drugs to
how shall we say
switch from a flushing toilet
to
a chemical or earth closet
we inhibit the flow of aqueous
insread of clearng the
blockage in the drains
however
we will ow concentrate on
Wallgreen
some
optometrists working in Wallgreen's
Boots Opticians
have a laser scanner
the cleaner could operate it
takes seconds to scan the retina
it does not tell you
as fundus photograph does
how rosie red the retina is
it tells you how
thick
the retina is
and this matters because
if the retina is abnormally
THIN - galucoma
Thick - infection
an infection in the eye
we are not talking on the scale of a hypopeon
we scatter these term for you to look up
an infection in the eye will stimulate
extra flushing aqueous secretion
and we don't want to hamper that
thick - light scattering - retina?
glaucoma meds - NOT INDICATED
if the retina is not bright red
the retina starves
more precisely
if it is not well pink with bright vessels
it will starve
putting that another way
if you have an infection in your eye
most but NOT ALL eye infections
come in from the front and
cause corneal blistering - ulcers
viruses can enter
via a circulatory - blood or nerves
route
not topical - somehting flying into your eye

27th June 2021

long long time ago
I can still remember
American Pie
we are here doing one of those
save the buggers the trouble of doing the
fact checking....
transparency things
long long time ago
our Ricker in the Vanessa Williams era
different story
shared a flat in
Guildford YMCA
with an aerospace engineer called
Bharat Mistry
and there is a Bharat Mistry on Linkedin
Richer is a person respected in some quarters
a standout from that time
apart from Baharat's snoring
was
what does interdiction mean?
I've been put on
Interdiction RADAR
it means speak between
it means
interception
like this shield over Israel
but without permission we will relate a little of
Bharat's early career
is or or was
A Kenyan Asian
from the BBC...
1968
More Kenyan Asians flee to Britain
Another 96 Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya
have arrived in Britain today
the latest of a growing exodus of Kenyan
Asians, fleeing from laws which prevent them from
making a living
essentially the late sixties in Kenya
for Asians were like the early days of
Krystal Nacht
for Jews in Germany in the 1930s
less Asians in Kenya than Jews in Germany and
The UK decided
let's not have World War 3
lets just give the poor buggers
yet another fresh start
After the second world war
Asians were found in all occupationsin
Nairobi and the townships
in business, in the police force,
bureaucracy and the professions
so, in essence
the British Empire had
landed smart Asians in East African countries
such as Kenya
similar to
Greeks running the Empire of Ancient Rome
and Romans and Kenyans in their turn said
I may not be able to add up
or choose an appropriate medical treatment
but I am a Citizen
this is my native land
and I will not counternance
being told that I am wrong
or living in worse conditions than
the experts
in the UK there is currently? a comedy series called
Plebs
plebs are low grade citizens
they have inherited rights but
not the two brain cells to rub together
and so
when Black Africans
and their associates
AfroCaribbeans etc
try to
treat slavery like
corn rows
a hair style
in a cultural appropriation
way
only Black can have corn rows
only Blacks were ever enslaved
they should contembplae the
history of East Africa in the 2nd half of the 20th century
post independence
2017 India GDP 7200 dollers US per person
Kenya Gross Domestic Product 3,500
in a sense
go home Packi
Kenyan Paki, double your income...
but The British did not
hand their former civil servants out to dry
today, interpreters in Afganistan
grudgingly getting the same help?
we've drifted way off the point
back to Mr Mistry
is he a world class electronics engineer?
maybe
he works for Siemens apparently
we know that Marconi closed down in Guildford
what we wanted to say about Mr Mistry was
at the time there were a lot of
aerospace companies in Surrey
and Mr Mystry applied to work for most of them
and the reason for his always looking for a new job?
he could easily get a job with them
but soon after starting with them
he would get pressure to become
a sales engineer based in
The Sub continent
he wanted to stay in the UK
they saw him as a slaes link to Asian markets
and this is yer Sajd Javid profile
bus driver's son
very successful in
BIG
business
because he was highly paid for his
supposed
IN
to Asian markets
and for that matter East African markets
so
a bean counter
a pro South Asia, anti East Asia bean counter
with a Catholic - proobably Roman Catholic wife
and that brings us to another topic
arge numbers of devout Roman Catholics
switching their devotions to
solitary prayer
using the epidemic as an excuse to
break the habit of church attendance
in Redcar we have a Roman catholic Primary school
and a standard state primary
effectively at opposite ends of a short street
so we have St Bendict's
so that would have been built and named
after 2005
before which Benedict????
when built it waas an amalgamation of
two schools one being St Alban's
the other St Dominic's
half a mile away
Coatham Church of England Primary
in that time
Coatham has booted the local
adult education centre out to
expand provision for primary pupils
the 'secular' school has had major investment
St Benedict's is on Mersey Road
and
well a flurry of school gate traffic problems
has all but gone
but
BUT at the other end of Tees Road
Newcomen's gates are
like a cattle mart
it is extrordinary how the traffic management problem
has shifted in a decade
essentially
we have switched from
Thames Road being a nightmare on school mornings to
Trent Road being worse than Thames/Mersey ever was
although the trend is likely to be
sex scandle driven
the faithful have not flocked back home to
The Church
in the face of the epidemic
and it was a Papal instruction to say Bless You
One of the symptoms of the plague was coughing and sneeing
and it is believed that Pope Gregory I
Gregorian chant?????
suggested saying
God Bless You
after a person sneezed
in hopes the prayer would protect them from an
other wise cretain death
traditionally
the japanese did not say
Bless you
they said
don't do that
in japanese natch
in Iowa
it was for a time
illegal to say
Gesundheit
in public or on the 'phone
however
traditional sources
saying bless you when somebody sneezes has two versions
both relate to a sort of Heimlich manouver
Heimlich maneuver
First Aid response to choking
a sneeze can be violent on a par with the Heimlich
and so
one version is
Thank you for expelling that evil spirit from your body
the other
people die after sneezing - see above
because they have Heimliched their soul
out of their body
and the blessing is a prayer in hopes that it will go back in
and in the day it rarelt did
hence the attraction of
antossins that leave victims drowning in their own
fluids

when somebody gets a new job
our first thought is not
how will they approach this new job
we first ask
what does the person making the appointment
think this person is going to do in this job
we are very confident that within 2 weeks
around 90 per cent of adults in the UK
will have had at least one SARS jab
in a sense it's like
somebody invents something
that chap in Malaysia or has he come back to the UK
who invented the ball barrow
a wheel barrow with a soccor ball for a wheel
must have gimick
great idea
convince the world that wheelbarrows don't work
sell then a patented alternative
and move on to the next product before they
realise they have been conned
those kind of guys need at some point to
hand over the company to
the people with the MBAs
Master of Business Administration
so far as we can tell
the media have been publishing material featuring
Matt Hancock
that is not paparatzi but
official in house security logs
given that the two people in the video are
the secretary of state and his
head of compliance
you wonder if this was
if you don't tell your wife
I'll hand over some recordings to the media
to get back to the Prime Minister and
Sajid Javid
if the majority of the majority have the vaccine
it is logical to put somebody with
links to the doubting 10 per cent
in charge of completing the job
we - in Redcar - have probably forgotten that
Sajid Javid was the
Finance Secretary - CHancellor
who refused to
tide SSI steel works over until
world steel prices improved
he's from a family of
four boys - 3 still alive
who developed their businesses from
a flat over a shop
but despite that being from a
British Pakistani family
he started in Rochdale but grew up in Bristol
there will be people who are now calculating
what chance he will return to the
Department for Tata Support?
or Sugar Daddy House?
in honesty we don't rate his chances high
he has become
niche
send him in when
the natives are revolting

25th June 2021

once upon a time
our Ricker had some sort of responsibility for
running a shop
one of the assistants was a bit overweight
and would turn up for
customer facing work
with food stains clear on
whatever she was wearing
and the other staff would complain about her to Ricker
and Ricker would say
she's doing very well
you do know she was run over when she was little
and suffered head injuries...

sometimes a new development comes as they say in
American Football - we think
out of left field
a councillor is facing a misconduct hearing over a
social media post which said
white people had also been slaves
A Darlington Borough Council inquiry found
Pauline Culley had broken its code of conduct
we understand that Mrs Cullen is in the
governing party
and the inquiry was instigated by the opposition
the meme??? she posted stated
people of all raceshad ancestors who
'took slaves, sold slaves, or were slaves
you're not special'
one of the problems with the internet is
it gives too much detail
a person who wants to attempt suicide
as an attention seeking exercise
having seen it done on the internet
finds it impossible to get it wrong
and dies
when they only wanted to
be special
if all you know is
how to commit suicide
how do you know how to stage a
failed attempt at suicide?
our Ricker has had similar experiences
new piece of kit
useless instructions
much experimentation
eventual success
thereafter utterly incapable of
demonstrating where he was going wrong
the link?
slavery in Ancient Rome
played an important role in society and
the economy
Besides manual labour
slaves performed many domestic services
and might be employed at highly skilled
jobs and professions
Accountants and physicians were often slaves
Slaves of Greek origin in particular
might be highly educated
unskilled slaves or those sentenced to slavery
as punishment
worked on farms, in mines and at mills
so by some standards
modern shemes such as
community payback
people on probation doing
so many hours of unpaid work
to compensate society for their offences
are
modern day, part time
slaves
in essence
two definitions of slavery
unpaid work
being in society but
not a citizen
in a sense
at a bit of a stretch
before universal adult sufferage
all women in the UK
who did not have the vote were
not amongst the
trusted subjects of the crown
is it 'cos I's black?
like the woman with the head injury
I am to be'excused boots' because
of something that may have happened to an ancestor
if those people had not been slaves
every black person would be
Ela Fitzgerald or Clive Myrie
what can you say?
what about the contrast between all thos people who's
ancestors may have been slaves
and all those families of white people who
lost loved ones in war?
being black does not hold everybody back
the bottom line is
it may be more difficult to succeed with an
ethnic handicap
but it is by no means impossible
what sets back the cause of any minority is
1 branding anyone who succeeds
a choc-ice
only black on the surface
not deeply rooted in the black culture
2 choosing your brain damaged members
and insisting they are crowned
king of the world
3 if you are Lewis Hamilton
and you are constantly under pressure to
fix things for the other brothers
you can't continue to succed and
act as an inspiration
rather than
a friend in high places
and so
launching disciplinary action over a tweet
about slavery has nothing to do with
black rights
it's about oppostion politicians trying to
discredit politicians in the ruling party
and as we say
nothing to do with
how the opposition would do a better job
if they got power

24th June 2021

we, in particular our Ricker
do tend to get places most people don't go
so we will just skirt around how come
our Ricker was in the custardy suite
at Redcar police headquarters
in the modern world
when it comes to the
Book 'em Danno
a Kojak reference
the custardy officers are likely to be
female civilian assistance workers
not semi-retired
desk sergeants
we will give a name here
we have no idea how the officer's career has progressed
but we are not dealing in a sort of
Colin Dexter, Morse, style fantasy here
we are recounting real life
the arresting officer was
DC Lyndsey Forbes responsible adult
and the suggestion is that
a responsible adult is somebody who is
not a lawyer but is a sort of chapperone
we are describing a
pre-CoViD scene
and so screens have now probably been erected
all over the place
as built the custardy suite had a wrap around desk
and the floor behind the desk was
a coupe of feet - half a metre
higher than the floor in front of the desk
so the scene is
the prisoner, the responsible adult
and the arresting officer are
on the lower level
and around three custardy clerks are at the higher level
the prisoner is male
there is a corridor that takes a right angle turn
as it transitions from being a lik between
the front desk - the police station reception
and the custardy suit where the afore mentioned
split level desk is the reception for custardy
one reception for the station
the other reception for the cells
the first or outer length of the corridor is lined
not with cells but with
interview rooms
so the prisoner arrives with DC Forbes and the
responsible adult
and they are just about to enter an interview room when
some bloke - assumed to be a male detective
bustles up and says to DC Forbes
I wanna be in on this one
and what shall we say
the responsible adult finds himself
not so much protecting the prisoner
but preventing the male tec from
disrupting DC Forbes' line of questioning
so after the decision to charge
we have the prisoner and the responsible adult and DC Forbes
at the lower level and three clerks at the upper level
and after some slightly testy interactions
along the lines
the answer you have given does not fit with
any of our tick boxes
another male officer appears and
grabs the prisoner by the knackers
because he has to be searched before he can be put into his cell
broadly and overall we have a sense that
the male inhabitants of the police station are
not happy with women dealing with
the protection of women
however
we want to trun this around
we want to remind people about the logistic of
Call the Midwife era
home births
the husband would in those days often be sent off
possibly to a neighbour's house to
'prepare some hot water'
whilst the main action took place
now the how shall we say
man who caused the pregnancy
is encouraged to attend as
chapperone
throughout
where we are getting to is
we think
if a woman needs a speculum shoved up her chuff
the appropriate adult to do it is
the bloke who regularly shoves his todger up there
we think
if a body needs a coil fitted
it should be done by
the regular rapist
under suitable female supervision

sometimes the expert can see that a word has a place
in the lexicon despite never having been used
never having been written down or spoken
in that sense the compilers of dictionaries are perhaps not
lexicographers
they need an example of the use of a word to deduce its meaning
words mean what they are used to mean
for example
endemic means local
from a logical point of view
if you parse the word as you would parse an phrase or sentence
from the dictionary complier's point of view
it means
entrenched
beause that is what it is used to mean
and so we turn to the words of
gender identity
we have not heard or seen the term
prototrans
transvestite
means a person who wears clothes intended for
the other gender
in broad terms
men are not expected to wear bras
but women can pretty much wear what they like
and so transvestite becomes a words from an era of
stict dress codes that is now gone
and so trans now s short for transgender
or trans-sexual
trans-sexual has the disadvatage of being confused with
bisexual
in the UK most people are very familiar with anews anchor who is
female and has a wife
she is in no way trans
she is an example of a person
perhaps living with a legacy or eary life experiences
who is not comfortable with the concept of having a
male life partner
neither partner in that marriage would contemplate
gender re-assignment
they just trust each other and get along
there are other females in the public eye
particularly in the sports arena
where one partner is
shall we say
oh we were so relieved when she decided to
take a wife
but still not driven to have their bodies changed
to suit their attraction to the female gender as a partner
these are not the subject of this unspoken word
the word is
prototrans
in a sense this is the equivalent of
closet gay
somebody who should be trans but
feels inhibited from admitting it
we have written before about
straight men consulting closet gay men about
what women want
there is something a little disturbing about a
female doctor who assumes that
having a female medic shove a speculum up a body
is not in any way similar to being
dry humped
relax, I've got a speculum but I have no willie so
you are safe
does not compute for most people
something else gets thrown in here
why would a person with
post meapausal or pre menapausal
vaginal atrophy
be in the market for
contraception?
why throw that nto the mix?
as we have said
if you are taking it on the shitter
you don't need contraception
and how many people have both
vaginal atrophy and a stoma?
some of the stuff just does not add up
I need contraception
just in case i get
dry humped
morning after pill....
if we stand back and from outside the box we define
rape
it is being dry humped whist fertile
otherwise you are a co-conspirator in the generation of
this pregnancy
except
Mama Mia
and the girl with the big pants
if you genuinely don't know which of a number of partners
is the father
you are living before DNA profiling
unless there's a war on and several of your partners
are missing in action
force peope to have a DNA test but
don't charge them with rape

23rd June 2021

Here's a thing
some popular histories of the
Railways in the UK
refer to each new line
needing to be sanctioned by an
Act of Parliament
there have been at least two
Matrimonial Causes Acts
in the UK
1857
and 1923
before the first of these
a marriage could only be dissolved by
Act of Parliament
our Ricker's grandad
got divorced between these two dates
and although he did not have to go to
Parliament
he had to go the
The High Court in London
to get his divorce
it was the Divorce Reform Act of 1969
that gave the UK divorce as presently understood
before then
adultery had to be proved
and there was a role or calling
professional co-respondent
the wife sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery
the husband responded to the charge
and a witness swore that they had seen or were
the co-respondent who would affirm that
the husband and the co-respondent had
for however brief a moment
been on the same bed
clothed perhaps
with both having bothe feet off the floor
that was the legal definition of adultery
so in essence
curling up at either end of a sofa bed would qualify
and this is not so different from the now discredited
Moslem man saying
I divorce you three times to his wife
after a 1937 act
grounds were extended to include
in addition to adultery
drunkenness, insanity, and desertion
after the 1969 Divorce Reform Act
they could separate for two years
or for five if only one partner agreed
and that would do
we see echoes of old laws everywhere
stalking derives to some extent
from forced contact thwarting a
separation qualification for divorce
what we want to address today is the period when
divorce was possible - but difficult
when marriage was generally considered to be
'till death do us part
so pre 1937
pre 1937 two little toughs from
the Welsh valley's
up before the beak because
one night they had given the village social club
a sheep tied to a lamp post
a miss and got stuck into a couple of local lasses
they come up on a charge of rape
none of the four can say who got who
up the duff
exaspirated the magistrate says
I'm going to adjourn this case for a week
if when you come back
each of you lads has married one of these lasses
I will dimiss the case
The whole thing
divorce and rape and marriage is fundamentaly about
suppressing
birth out of wedlock
bartardy
and like Chinese Whispers
it evolves into
I'm a bit borasic
borasic lint - skint
who can I accuse of having raped me so I can get
the 15 grand
criminal injuries compensation whack?
from being a protection for the unborn child
it becomes a gravy train for lawyers and harlots
if you have been
genuinely
assaulted
then the charge should be
assault
we have this latest case
and we do not mean to prejudice any appeal
but the defendant's story was
the condom split
so the street walker says
I want your details pending a
pregnancy test
or I'll tell the police you raped me
so the punter strangled the woman
this was 1997
a little late for this but
DNA profilling changed that game
before DNA a dead victim couldn't give evidence
after DNA if you wanted to silence a victim
you had to both kill them and destroy their remains
or
you had to keep them away from the authorities
until all trace of your DNA would have
possibly, hopefully, have been washed away
women should not need to
go thermonuclear
and claim rape
if women could take forward complaints of
assault
without bringing in
threat of pregnancy
which rape is
despite all attempts to expand
'rape' to include the likes of buggery
then juries would be much more willing to
convict on the basis that the perp would
get wrist slapped
no life destroyed
and in parallel
we see
guilty of manslaughter
not guilty of murder
being the routine preference of juries in anything but
slam dunk cases
we read some out and out
cant
in the summing up of many judges
and the above will seem somewhat academic
the jury are likely to be thinking
1 why were you on the pull and not on the pill?
have you not heard of the morning after pill?
and the police would be asking
since you were on the pill, what was your jeapody
since your 'phone says you were happy to have
Tom Dick and Harry up you
why pick on this poor sap?

The BBC has a female
Shock Jock
called variously but mainly
Naga Munchetty
her latest 'outburst' relates to
the contraceptive coil
a shock jock is a type of radio broadcaster or
DJ
who entertains or attracts
listeners by
using humour and/or
melodramtic exaggeration
that may offend some listeners
w have concerns for
Mrs Haggar
in this one instance she shows signs of
vaginisemus
overall her behaviour is indicative of
some sort of we say this, not least, because of the similarites
in lirfe hisory to
Redca's own long lost MP
Mo Mowlam
vaginismus symptoms
your vagina suddenly tightening if you try to
put something into it such as a
tampon
time was
coils were supposed to work by
causing an irritation
these days IUDs
intrauterine devices
are supposed to prevent conception
for around 5 years per insertion
by shedding
slow release copper
frankly
WE poor saps
can't see why a body would prefer an IUP
to a
hormonal contraceptive implant
but there may be a need for an alternative
we are aware of the stories of
The Stray
and vaginismus
it's a bit like myths of
dens vagina
the idea of a vagina having teeth
The Stray in Redcar/Marske
is a coastal equivalent of
The Stray in the likes of Harrogate
a large slightly remote stretch of grassland
and the stories relate to
a female clamping so hard on a male member
of an evening, on The Stray
that the couple both died of exposure
before morning came...

22nd June 2021

the all time
God I wouldn't kick that
out of bed
champ
in our Ricker's book is
Lisa from
Ice Road Truckers
the series has ended
that strand of
infotainment
has morphed and changed somewhat
we are not sure how widely
The Supervet
is distributed
It is a series about a UK based Irish
venenary orthopaedic surgeon
Noel Fitzpatrick
some of the shows have suffered from
the curse of the fogging filter
you make a superb documentary
and then you
transmit it through fogged glass
but that aside
this series features genuine jeopardy
the basic fact is
almost none of the animal patients will
live for more than 10 years
and so the jeopardy is not
genuinely life and death
it is length and quality of life
clearly the animal has a problem
the question is not
will the animal live?
but
what is Noel going to do about the problem
the series has no need to introduce
synthetic jeopardy
and at the same time
although there is scope for endearing little
side stories
about how cute the nurses find the patients
ther are no
out and out pranks
that so marred the
Chip Foose auto show Overhaulin'
the whole Overhaulin' concept is
now - again with reduced pranking - better done in the UK show
Car SOS
the message from infotainment is clear
less synthetic jeopardy and pranking
more geewhiz
How successful is
Speed is the new Black?
and very watchable are
the half of
Kindig Customs
that aren't shot on a mobile 'phone
at a car show
there is something quite endearing about how
the women in that show
allow themselves to be portraied
more like The Osbournes than the Kardacians
all of this is background to our thoughts about
F1
Formula One motor racing
the core question is
given the superb visual
not audio
facilities
do people want to watch
superb driving
or
synthetically 'close' competition
whenever the rules of the game start to
even the odds
the clue is in the name
there is one 'sport' designed for
betting
it is
handicap horse racing
instead of introducing
playing field levelling
penalities
for inexplicable rule infringements
why not introduce
push bike racing style
bonifications
that is expand on the idea of
an extra point for fastest lap
and instead of
time penalties
introduce
time bonuses
time deducted from the final time
we are all well acquainted with the idea of
a driver yet to make a pit stop
having driven furthest but
not really bing in the lead
F1 is not
roundy roundy racing
so you could never take a
drone snapshot
and know who was winning
like in the athletics 100 m dash
the stats are the thing
you look to
The Leader Board
as in golf
to see the state of play
the whole deal is
stats plus overtakes
but all this
it would be bad for business if
a black man won in Russia
needs to be dropped

19th June 2021

The underlying ethos of the
British Anglican Christian Church is
if in doubt
act charitably
and
God will see you right
if you back a wrong'un
God will even the score
we remember the face but not the name of a
famous mid 20th century
murdered defending cleric
but let that pass
we have not researched the motivations of
the present UK Prime Minister's family in
choosing
Johnson
as the family name....
but we will quote
Samuel Johnson
on 7 April 1775
referring to William Pitt Patriotism is the last refuge of
the scoundrel
we tend to disagree
we suspect that
piety is the last refuge of the scoudrel
Lord make me pious but not yet
Augustine of Hippo
actually
lord make me chaste (sexually pure)
but not yet
the term
bumptious
comes to mind regarding the UK Prime Minister
rudely self-assertive
quarrelsome, self-important
from bump
a dull hevy blow
as a cricket enthusiast
he may identify himself with the
form of bowling delivery referred to as
a bumper
we draw the parallel with
Martin Bashir
journalist don't chriticise
journlists
not until they are dead at least because
the Bashir affair is the perfect example of the
turism that
no matter how discredited a colleague may be
you may wake up one morning and find that
he is your editor
wasn't there a relatively recent
former finance minister - Chancellor
who woke up to find himself
editor of the
London Evening Standard
we do see a pattern of behaviour
conversion? to Roman catholicism
friendship with US Presidents
that is consistent with the idea that
the present UK Prime Minister
has a plan to become the next
President of the United States
he qualifes as he was born in
New York, New York
we are much more interested in the
New Atlantic Charter
and the Special Relationship
between the US and the UK
we see a new conflict between
the new US President and the
US Roman Clergy
Middlesbrough in the North East of England was
once reffered to as
The Infant Hercules
and the US between the
First and Second World Wars
was an Infant Hercules
we see everything through a prism
we see the US as having produced
all the Allied War Material
used in the Second World War
we assume it was always so
we forget that from
the Boar war ti the end of the
First World War
it was the Uk that was the world's prime producer of
war materials
Steam Punk imagery aside
the Vicorian Age was called Victorian because
the UK WAS the Workshop of the World
a major part of the
Greatness
of the United States
was down to
the UK deciding to confront Nazi Germany
and deciding to buy war materials from the US
The Us does not want to be anybody's
client state
but with such as short
history
as a modern nation
it would far rather be regarded as a
Former British Colony
than be regarded as a
colony
consider the
Rust Belt
of the US
and consider the ethnicity
Pensilvania Dutch
and the
Building of
The Wall
due to
democracy
we have had Presidents - Bush?
speaking in a Hispanic version of Spanish
and a Kenedy stating
Isch bin ein Berliner
in fainess and translation he quote is actually
there is no prouder boast than
I am a Berliner
but by decalring the first half in English and the
second half in German
he gave a certain ant British tinge
that may have been intended as
pro-Irish
the US is riven with sectarian tensions
and for them
them being US administartions
Britain is the nearest thing they have to a
neutral corner
and so we come to a very important
media glitch
the media sail along and regard
up there
as
Scandinavia
Norway Sweden Finland
we have said
AstraZenica is
Swedish-British
Astra Swedish
Zenica being ICI
it does not seem to have occured to
world media types that
Norway would try to trash the reputation of
a Swedish vaccine
they all Scandi ain't they?
they were alert to
the contrarian nature of the
cheese eating surrender monkies
in Paris
but everything is sweetness and light
up in the snow...

turning to the Cinema on the Sands
nothing photogenic has happened recently
there was
tanking
waterproofing the basement
and that stopped
steel and concrete erection
but the overall shape should emerge soon

14th June 2021

this is yer classic
Redcar Rivers
semi-terrace pass through

we have to add important notes here
first
these autodefibrilators are very smart
they will not shock a patient who
does not need it
you are treating the patient
you are not
offering tribute to God
only do what the patient needs
not something that
occurs to you
for instance
if the patient is bleeding
stop the bleeding before you do CPR
consider
is there internal bleeding
all places where people could get
over excited
sports entertainment exam centres loads
should have a defib
thirty seconds getting the m/c
is time you can afford to
hold off CPR
you've got a couple on minutes
here is a point we have made before
if the arhythmia is due to
excess adrenaline
pumping two of three
epipens worth of adrenaline
into them will probably finish them off
if both defib and epipen are available
TRY THE DEFIB FIRST
it's way smarter than the pen

regular readers will know that
our Ricker is a walking encyclopaedia of
biological and medical facts
sometimes it gives him fellow feeling with
women who feel regarded as
walking wombs
to some extent we try to emphasize the
more unusual aspects of current issues
and so we come to
sudden heart stops in the fit young
our Ricker has direct experience of this
except that the early 60s isn't young
it kiled his mother in her early sixties
first of all we have to set down
what people think they know
people think that people die of heart failure through
developing a myocardial infarct
and so all the emphasis is on
cholesterol
and stents
the accepted concept of
how and why people die from heart failure
is that people eat the wrong things
cholestorol builds up in the
blood vessels around the heart
and a wedge of the heart muscle dies through
starvation - mainly oxygen starvation
this effect is almost exactly the same as
the cause of a
stroke in the brain
there, a chunk of brain dies through
either too much blood crushing it
needs something to stop the bleeding
or a blockage that needs clot buster drugs or
some sort of stent
but stents in the brain is my more risky than
stents on the surface of the heart
all of which has nothing to do with
fit person drop down dead syndrome
nothing whatever

two words you probably haven't heard and one you
will know well
phrenic
vagus
hiccups
imagine that you are a car
any conventional road motor vehicle
just say you do a Dr. Foster
Doctor Foster, went to Gloucester
in a shower of rain
that is Gloster
we were amused when somebody from a Northern State said
This is not Texas
we pronounce
Houston
House Ton
he stepped in a puddle
right up to his muddle
Vicar of Dibbley...
and never went there again
if you were a safari prepared
Land Rover or a Humvee
you would have a snorkel
and you wouldn't get water in your engine
but you would get it in your
electrics
like
like pressure washing a motorcycle
when a person's heart stops or after defibrilisation
they immediately sit up
right as rain
the fault is not with their heart
but with their electrics
our Ricker has a stressful time of it
a few years ago because
amongst other things
he started to get really quite bad
hiccups
and being the walking encyclopaedia of
all things medical
he knew what that meant
he had a problem with his phrenic nerves
they were firing off when they shouldn't
and Ricker further knew that
if this was due to an infection
the next nerves in the firing line were his next segment up his body
and instead of
disturbance to the smooth working of his
diaphragm
essential for shallow breathing
WE HAVE A BIG SIGNAL ABOUT THIS LATER
it woudld be the vagus next and that
influences the beating of the heart
here's the thing
how do you distress your phrenic and vagus nerves?
well it can be a
this calls for some embryology
search
recurrent larangeal nerve
nerves exit the spine further up the body
than the place to act
so
these chest acting nerves exit the spine in the neck
and then they track down outside the spine
to where they will act
so
an ingrowing hair in your ear
we're quoting the Mayo Clinic here
can disturb the nervous contro of your heart
but a tumour in your neck is more likely the cause
what about these fully fit young
athletes/
it's simple and
almost undetectable
at moments of peak excitement
like playing in a European Soccer finals
you blow a fuse
not water in your electrics
more
adrenaline in your electrics
if you come round
you will be fine
you just had a time out
howsomever
CoViD....
if the virus has damaged your
phrenic and vagus nerves
you wll find it very difficult to
come off artificial ventilation
and we hear of patients
struggling to breath
they have probably lost all
diaphragmal respiration
and are struggling to breath using
accessory muscles of respiration
the intercostal muscles
belly not rising and falling but
chest struggling to heave

12th June 2021

from time to time we are reminded about the
Red Flag Act
that's probably not what it's called required a pedsetrian to walk in front of
every motor vehicle
waving a red flag
consider an alternative
parallel universe
in which
airline pilots are not allowed to hold
a road vehicle driving licence
and must employ a chaufer for all
private journies
now slide back into the world we know and
consider eye care
back in the days when the local chemist's
or pharmacy sold all forms of
'chemicals'
including motor vehicle fuel
there were a lot of chemists who
fixed people up with specs.
up until the
Opticians Act of 1958
the testing of eyes and the dispensing of specs
were not regulated activities
people - many working in chemist shops - learned about
optics on the job
and may have done some sort of
night school or day release
here is where the problem comes in
when the testing of eyes and the dispensing of specs
required a qualification...
it wasn't just market traders and dispensing chemists who
would have been without a licence
a registration with the
General Optical COuncil
it would also have been
family doctors and
eye surgeons
who were cut out of this work
there used to be
DOs - Dispensing Opticians
and
OOs - Ophthalmic Opticians
now OOs are called optometrists
because the UK will usually follow US fashions in such things
we have a small story about a student optometrist
so far as we know this still applies but at the time of this
tale
optometrists had to do a full time degree
followed by a pre-registration year
so we are referring to a student with a degree
in Optometry and Visual Science
and she was taking her pre-registration exams
and she kept failing
and eventually she wrote to the particular examiner who
was failing her
to ask why
this examiner was a retired or semi-retired but registered
this is the early 1980s in the UK
he was not a graduate
but had decades of experience
in the trade
and he told the student that she was failing because
he tought that the way she repaired - shortened - the sides
of a spectacle frame
rendered the specs unacceptable for sale
for lack of neatness
and she had been wracking her brains about
what pathology she had failed to detect
and he was about the merchantable quality of the specs
and that would be the responsibility of
a DO, not an OO
so it does raise the question
how adept do you need to be in
anciliary skills
to qualify as
a principal?
even if you intend to work in a hospital
or a multiple
do you need all the skills needed to be
a single handed practitioner
in order to qualify?
on the other hand
if you are 'time served' are you entitled to become
an examiner
and exclude from your profession
people who 'do magic'
with science and that?
if you are a self financing graduate
no student loan because you have a degree..
are the lower profession - optometry
entitled to
throw you off the course you have paid for
because you have
the potential to be an eye surgeon?
if you qualify as an optometrist
you can pay your way through
medical school by
earning from
optometry session work
but not if they optometrists don't want
medical students
on THEIR register

11th June 2021

sometimes a body can get a little stressed
a little overtired
our Ricker feels like a todler sometimes
sometimes I feel like a motherless child
we haven't looked that reference up
anyway
the council
want to know about on street parking on
The Rivers Estate
The Rivers Estate was started in 1939
and the roads - in general - were doubled in length
twenty or thirty years later
the older houses are in terraces of six houses
and further these are not traditional terraces
each set of six homes consists of
two entirely normal madern style
semi detatched homes
with four terrace houses built between them
linked at first floor level but
in pairs at ground level
separated by a tunnel-like pass through
around 3 feet wide
designed to
get a bicycle or motor bike
from the front street to the back garden
the original half of the estate
the original ends of the streets
were concieved as a
miniature garden suburb
with trees in the grass verges
and
'free' fruit trees in the back garden
each house now has a separate back garden
but as built
there was a semi-public pathway along the
back of each terrace
and what is now the garden was an
attached allotment
separated by the communal path
so each of these 'roads'
they are all called Tyne Road
etc
with every road name being
the name of a river that starts with a T
and ending in Road
the original roads consisted of
four terraces - two pairs facing each other
24 homes plus the non-Thames Road halves of the
top of the road semis
for a long time now they have had around 50 homes
and so of the 50 homes
16 are mid-terrace
and the rest are some sort of semi
having by definition
only one attached neighbour
what is interesting is that all the roads except the
linking
Thames Road
have two car widths of gap where ther is a gap
some houses - semis - in Thames Road
have the with of one car between them
those homes tend to have
a one car width communal side alley leading to
two separate garages
all of which is a little testing
and the width of the road is such that
back in the days of
community spirit
at say the north end
the on street parking was - by tradition
on the west side of the road
and outside the south end terraces it was on the
east side of the road
things have moved on
people don't cycle to work
that is not the half of it
the thing is
this - in good measure - is a community of
trades
employed and self employed
mum needs a car to get to the hospital
where she works = James Cook
and dad?
dad is expected to take his works van home
each night
and so
parking on the verges
trees deemed
rotten and removed
should the roadway be widened
to allow parking on
both sides of the road
just at the moment that
pavements in
Station Road
are being widened - and parking banned
so that hospitality venues can
serve at tables on the sidewalk?

and that leads us to
hospitality
three words
hospital, hospice, hospitality
all derived from the Latin
hospes - a guest
and hospitium - a place for guests
this is a major
paradigm - paradyme to you and me
a paradigym shift
a hospice and a hospital are
in origin the same thing
whether a hospice or a hospital
they were a place where
paliative care was offered and given
a hospital was like
The Sir William Turner Hospital
at Kirkleatham
a place where
like the Chelsea Hospital
people who could fend for themselves
could have a quiet and supervised little
monkish cell
whereas a hospice
was more for the care of the dying
a development from
beds in the aisles of cathedrals
and it is interesting that
these days
people think of
assisted dying as
playing God
but until not that long ago
attempting
cures
as opposed to offering paliative care
was seen as
playing God
since illnes was seen as a
punishment from God
some see this life as
the actual purgatory where we atone for
sins in a previous life
meicine od a curative sort
was seen as
undermining God's justice
and we return to a line from over a year ago
if this world is a
theme park style purgatory
pneumonia is the old man's friend
God sends you pneumonia when
she thinks you have suffered enough
how distant is this
consider
hand washing rituals
consider thanking a person for sneezing
blees you
thanks for expelling your demons
not such a popular idea as it was a couple of years ago

7th June 2021

our ricker's favourite
News Anchor
is Pretty Polly
Joanna Gosling
but the one he finds
fascinating
is
Martine something or other
Ricker knows a thing or two about
eyes and specs
see, Martine, for less than a tenner
you can get
swing or hinge lens
ready readers
with yer contacts in..
if you need them
you put on these specs and
either the one reader lens
swings over your nose from one eye to the other
or there are two lenses and they independently
fold down out of the way
and with care
you don't need to look like
you put on your eye shaddow
with a tar brush

6th June 2021

our Ricker wants to unburden himself of the next
concept
we wrote about the influence of
prey image on speciation
but firt
we did look it up
Italy never had an empire before
1882
1882 - 1938 Eritea
1889 - 1936 Somalia
1936 - 1941 Italian East Africa
1918 - 1920 Italian Alabania
1939 - 1943 Italian Albania
1912 - 1947 Italian Islands in the Aegean
1901 - 1943 consessions in Tientsen
in general
apart from Libya 1911 - 1943
this is not an empire
this is 'Italy' acting as a
cat's paw
a surrogate for another empire
mainly Germany
Mussolini was Prime Minister of
Italy from 1922 to 1943
he sort of invented and spread
Fascism
and Adolf Hitler took him up on that
the fascist Axis was
Italy,1922 - 1943
Germany,1933 - 1945
Japan 1931 - 1945
other countries involved
Austria 1933 - 45
Brazil 1932 - 1938
Republic of China 1940 - 1945
pupet of Japan
Croatia 1940 - 1944
France 1940 - 1944
Greece 1936 - 1941
Hungary 1932 - 1945
Norway 1942 - 1945
Portugal 1933 - 1974
Poland - the 1930s
Romania 1940 - 1944
Slovakia 1939 - 1945
Spain 1936 - 1974
South Africa - off and on from the 1930s and 1940s
to a resurgeance in the 1970s and 1980s
Yugoslavia 1935 - 1939
all of this is to question
was the a German or an Italian Empire?
the 'politics' and foundation was Italian
but the Muscle and the Husstle was
German
having set that straight
No German or Italian colonies in the time of
James Cook, Walter Raleigh, and that sort of
explorer colonisation era

to return to the speciation issue
we need another concept
or concept pair
dogs
dogs, cats and bears
predator mammals
they tend to have three things
a den
a territory
a home range
some of these mountain lion style
big cats have a home range of serveral
tens if not hundreds of square miles
kilometers
take the dogs
painted dogs is it now
so they have dens to keep their pups in
and such
they have a territory
they defend that against
incursion from
how shall we say?
dogs who are family
but not of their
household - denhold
if these households bein to drift apart
genetically
due to sexual selection or custom
they may speciate
but it has to be remembered that
all these dogs will tolerate all the other dogs
being within their
home range
and will only chase them away from their
territory
IF they ENCOUNTER them
so as they drift apart in their genetics...
are they in the same habitat - sympatric
or on different territories - alopatric
and here is another
set book for the
ethnographer
or zoologist
The Territorial Imperative
A personal inquiry into the animal origins of
Property and Nations
by
Robert Ardrey
1966
1970 The Social Contract
and then we go to the ethologist
currently promoting the
BBC World Service
Jane (sometime Van Lerwick) Goodall
study chimps for insights into
human behaviour
Chipms can have trisomy like humans have
Downs Syndrome
they have it as trisomy three chromosomes
instead of a pair
at chromosome 22
The dailymail,co,uk
reckon chips with Downs can only survive in captivity
under human care
they reckon the only other one died at 2 years old
go to the Sydney Morning herald...
chimpanzee mother caring for Down syndrome infant in wild
can teach us about human behaviour
2015
2019 we have The Mirror with a picture of a tiger
with a deformed face
and the 'paper' claims
it isn't Downs
it was due to incest
2019
admittedly leftist fascist 'newspaper' in the UK
working an angle to say
Downs is not down to
trisomy
it's down to incest
and that paper may well be
campaigning against
antivaxers
we don't know, we don't care
we just think it's an out and out miracle that
the UK media have allowed a bit of space for
science
in the current epidenmic

there was this guy
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
1809 -1865
he became a member of the
French Parliament
after the 1848
he was the first person to call himself
an anarchist
and he was the first to use the phrase
property is theft
he worked with Marx
they fell out
they spilt
The International Working Men's Association
into
Anarchists and Marxists
Proudhon's concept of
anarchism crystalised into today's
federalism or
devolution
in that sense
Proudhon was for
small government
and Marx was for
centralisation
the command economy
the state as a substitute for the church
we can wind way back in this
we have said that Christianity established itself in
teh Roman Empire and not in the Arab tribes where
it originated
Ricker has a tendency to
refer from time to time to
Irish Catholics
and
Roman Catholics
Roman Catholics are determined to be
CAtholics because they
exterminated Irish Catholicism
way way back
the evolution was
Roman Empire
adopts Christianity
Roman Empire falls
Christianity becomes
as Roman Catholicism
Soft Power
often not very soft
inquisition etc
for a resurgence for what we may now call
Italian Influence
in the world
colonies around the world were
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portugese
British,
and just a touch of German
can you name an Italian ex-colony?
essentially
every Spanish and Portugese Colony
was an Italian Colony
or maore precisely
a Roman Collony
and hence the term
citoyen anarchiste de Barcelon
and the book and two films
Papillon
Papillon is a story about a petty criminal
'framed' for the murder of a
Crime Boss
despite having an alibi
presumably to protect the real assasin
he gets transported to
a French penal colony
Devil's Island
and the story gets a bit like
The Shawshank Redemption
first movie had Steve McQueen
we do think it would have been a role for
Donald Pleasence
not Steve McQueen
however, the character
the book is by Henri Charriere
and seems to be a sort of
fictionalised autobiography
the author seems to have served two purposes for the
authorities in France in the first half of the
20th century
1 fall guy for an assasin
2 anti anarchist trophy or hostage
he was a petty criminal
the term
safe cracker
seems to refer to
non-violent thief
burglar
not
robber
a burglar steals from a place
a robber steal from a person, in person
attacks a person in the street
or as part of a home invasion
this is the basis of the defence of the burgler
nobody was using it
TWOC
regarding motor vehicle theft
taking without the owner's consent
prosecution not able to establish that the thief
intended to permanently deprive the owner
of their property with the barack room lawyer leftist politicians
regarding it as
prompted charity
redistribution of wealth without the need for
a taxation system
or a
Local Labour Party administered taxation system
you haven't stolen it if
you abandon it after you have had a bit of fun with it
hence
handling stolen goods
being a more serious offence than
theft
smart chap
put the
vulnerable adult
up to it
he - Papillon - is not executed but sent to
Internal exile in Guiana
a French colony in South America
and there he gets the description
citoyene anarchiste de Barcelon
to make him a more fearsome character
and/or to say
Proudhon may be an MP or ex-MP and untouchable
be we've got one'a them anarchists
locked up on Devil's Island
and you could join him
and not the MP if you don't watch yourself

we feel the need to further explore the contrast between
sympatric
and
alopatric speciation
so we will begin with those tits
we have said that that speciation is
alopatric
but some may say it's sympatric
take a single tree
a tree that is very tall
the three types of tit lve on different
stories - levels - of this tree
in that sense they do not live in the same space
that makes it alopatric
but the roots of that tree are in a single
geographical location
and that makes it sympatric
if the tree is surrounded by trees that are
not so tall
those trees will have no coal tits
the coal tits will be dotted across the landscape
living wherever the trees are tall enough
so species separated by
altitude or elevation
appear to be separated by location
genuine sympatric speciation is about
a randon diversion of characteristics
say a species lives in one of those benign locations where there are
more than one ways to skin a cat
the species is well adapted to
weather, seasons, shelter, predation threat
but
we get an element of that
Descent of Man
sexual selection
we wrote about earlier
some individuals especially in the likes of birds
and perhaps collonial insects
where there is parental care, creshing, sibling assistance
last years brood help with this year's brood
a family tradition or preference for something
a food source or type
may develop
taking the insects
taking bees and wasps
if the inhabitants of one hive
start to prefer the nectar of one species of flower
and the inhabitants or a nearby other hive
keep leading ech other to
a different species of flower
over time
with clanish loyalty
within the two hives
the individuals with mouthparts best suited to the
family fetish food source
will domimate in that hive
and the inhabitants of the two hives will become sufficiently
distinct
to be classified as two different species
that is yer genuine sympatric speciation
and the same
actually much more likely
with the birds and the beaks and the size etc
of the seeds their family specialise in
this used to be called
prey image
it has a less violent new name that we forget
if you feed garden birds on
dred meal worms for weeks on end
and then you switch to
something else
protein pellets?
the birds will ignore the new food type and search and search
for the meal worms you are no longer providing
food looks like a meal worm
we have to name check Alfie here
what is the most gannetlike dog in the world
a black lab
so when Ricker meets up with Bonzo the Loony dog
real name Barny
Ricker give shim one single slice of
Morrisons chorizo sausage
sold rather sporadically for a
piza topping
so sporadically that at 4 or 5 slices a week
they get rather hard and dried out over time
but Barny isn't fooled
that's his amn and that's his sausage
BUT
when Ricker offers the same sausage slices to
Alfie wot runs
GPS hardware
Alfie politely takes it into his mouth
holds it for a few seconds and
politely returns it
on the basis that although it tastes OK
nothing that hard
could possibly be food
must be an offcut from his dad's shop
however, a slice of the same chorizo
sliced directly off the same ring
same sausage but softer
produces the same demonstration of thanks as
Barny has for the hard tack
for the sake of his teeth
we think Alfie needs to get used to
chewing not bolting his food
fat chance with a lab

5th June 2021

by the by we will take the opportunity to
celebrate the contribution of
Anne and Duncan Bulmer to the development of
our Ricker
we will just say
firstly, in contrast to every other living person
it seems
Anna and Duncan regarded our Ricker as trustworthy
every other person contacting our Ricker
does a version of Sam's prologue
'if I want to, I can have you arrested'
A and D never threatened our Ricker
and on just the one occasion
when their daughter - only child - Diane
see what they did there
D and Ann - Diane
when she was about seven years old
they had him
as a teenager
baby sit sit Diane
she was very good and put herself to bed
Ricker just watched TV and was there
just in case...
so there was a day when Ricker was telling some story about
Life at Durham
and he mentined Prebends Bridge
and Ann said you are saying that very carefully
it sounds like you are saying pre bens bridge
do you know it's really
Prebends' Bridge
sometimes our Ricker has things to learn
even from a Primary School teacher
in all that time Ricker never asked which
Redcar Primary School
Mrs. Bulmer taught at...
a prebend is well here's a problem
the person is called
prebandary
clergyman - or woman we suppose - in receipt of a prebend
a prebend is the stipend of a canon or
member of a cathedral chapter
so why is it called
Prebends Bridge?
Prebends Bridge was designed by George Nicholson
and built between 1772 and 1778
it was built on the instructions of
The Dean of Durham
to serve as a private road for the
Dean and Chapter of Durham
giving access from the south through
the Watergate
and erm
well we said
Ricker was 'at' St Cuthbert's Society
Cuth's
and Cuths is on
South Bailey
and Prebends Bridge
carries the south end of South Bailey
across the River Wear
it can be opened to vehicles under 3 tonnes
but it rarely is
it happened in autumn 2010 when
Sadler Street was closed
We'll do the Bill Bryson
go there
South Bailey runs along the short tall side of
Durham Cathdral
if you go all the way
cross the bridge and then down onto the
river towpath
you can look up and see
and perchance photograph
the most magnificent aspect of
Durham Cathdral
BUT
we are not here for that
there was a North English version of Greencil
called
John Poulson
but he is forgotten
this story is about
Dr Coulson
he was a lecturer in ecology at Durham
and
a few people at Durham
Peter Evans, Dr Coulson, and
David Bellamy
were in demand form
TV
to contribute to shows
according to Dr Coulson
the pay offered didn't cover expenses
so
Either David Bellamy was getting a different deal
or he was doing it for fun
and the link between the
towpath below Prebends Bridge
and
Dr Coulson
was
one of his practical classes
the titmice
chicadees and tits
form the Paridae
in Durham they have
in the trees along the banks of the River Wear
they have
three species of tits
Great tit
Eurasian blue tit
Coal tit
Blue tits are blue, the others aren't
the trees near Prebends Bridge are
proper big
in simple terms
blue tit - blue, black and yellow
great tit - black and yellow, no blue
coal tit - no yellow
the xercise was
look at the proper big trees
divide the height of the trees into three sections
in your mind
bottom third
middle third
top third
spend a suitable time - half an hour/
count how many of each tit type
you see in each third of the trees
and you discover
alopatric speciation
we have this idea of
Rain Forests
beautiful paradise places of
endless productivity and protection in which
as the Bible has it
The lion lies down with the lamb
what we are referring to is the idea that
'The Galapagos Islands' are remote
and no people and no rats and such live there so without
predation pressure
all sorts of types of bird crop up and thrive
W RONG
each island has its own species of finch
and only one species of finch
it's alopatric speciation
the three types of tit are adapted to live at
different hights up a tree
so if you prune, coppice, pollard the trees in the wood
all different methods of tree management
it does not matter how many tree you grow
or how well they grow
if they don't grow tall enough
some species will not have the habitat they need
Ricker is old and his memory fails but
probably coal tits need very tall trees
the experts say
coal tits need coniferous forests but
it's just that conifers grow tallest but
don't tell 'em
if ignorance is bliss
'tis folly to be wise
but word to the wise
go to a park to see coal tits
it's unlikely you have a
tall enough tree in your back garden
if you want
biodiveristy
you need
habitat diversity
not just an absence of human influence
and another thing
while we're on
consider insects and hedgehogs
hengehogs probaby eat worms but
let's say they eat insects
at at least one stage of their lives
most insects either fly or are
windblown
hedgehogs don't ever fly
one day our Ricker met one of the many
brick walls he has encountered in normal conversation
he was talking to a Ph.D. zoology student
this guy - you may recall him as the one who got 4 years
to do his thesis because he had broken his leg
even though his project was lab based...
Ricker could not get the concept of
wildlife corridors
across to this guy
and now we see
goats and deer in town centres because
CoViD lockdowns
for a little while removed the need for wildlife corridors
wldlife that does not fly could
get places
get places without wildlife corridors
number one wildlife corridor?
don't grub up the hedgerows when
turning a bunch of fields into
a housing estate

here's a thought from
The Labour Playbook of Entitlement
need some timber for a garden DIY project
don't go down the timber yard to buy some
go dismantle some road side fencing
one of them rich Tories will fix the fence
eventually
after somebody has been killed because their vahicle
hit a straying cow

2nd June 2021

we do feel we are getting way ahead of our selves
talking about Redcar's new
cinema on the sands
because
McAlpines have only got a handful of
people working in it and it is due to open next year
2022
but let's follow the dream
we said that back in the day the Daniels family
ran a cinema in Grangetown
we hear a lot about
inequality and deprevation
but it is always in terms of
maw monay and jarbs
if you have a
white trash police service saying
nobody who is smart enough to
run a cinema
has any right living here...
because we want this lot
to ourselves
to do with as we please
then that is a formula for
social stagnation
whatever you think about police officers
their authority is
summary
there is summary justice and there is we forget the term
the rule of law as played out in a court of law
and so
in the extreme
we equip the police to be able to
Taser a person who's next immediate action is
unpredictable
and who is not responding to lawful commands
but we do not empower the police to
go home, have a think, and then go around to
someone's house and shoot them dead
a considered response to a situation is
above the pay grade
of any police officer
the police are empowered to
secure the scene
and
preserve and collect evidence
they are not empowered to decide
who is allowed to live in your street

we have to declare a rather tangential possible
conflict of interest
full transparency...
our Ricker has to report that his sister has told him that
the youngest of his three nephews
an accountant
works for an accountancy company working for
some or all of those involved in developing the
Moderna Vaccine

we are well impressed with all the data emerging from
this epidemic
but we do want to put it in context
all these lab results
the test and trace
are a bit like
suddenly inventing a camera that can
detect the ultra violet light
that our eyes cannot see
if it weren't for the testing
we would think this was all over
that is all very well but this confusion over
mutation versus variant
is important
if you have a bit of classical evolutionary theory
Darwin finches
Daewin's finches also known as
Galapagos finches
are a group of about 18 species of passerine birds
they are well known for their remakable variety
diversity
in beak form and function
There's someone else you should have read
David Lack
his Darwin's Finches is or should be a
set text
for zoology students
broadly
them all be the same LBJs
little brown jobs
but their beaks or bills or mouth parts
vary according to which of the
Galapagos Islands
they live on
so, see a beak
say an island name
this is exactly what we mean by
corona virus variants
alpha, beta, gamma, delta
say a variant name and
scientists can tell you where that variant evolved
and so
around the world there are around
200 countries
but
far fewer
isolated communities
like?
sub Saharan Africa
cut off from the rest of the world by the desert
like South America
scientists know there can only be
at most a dozen variants of
CoViD 19
and so there are
well enough letters in the Greek alphabet
to cover the lot
unless you get a new Galapagos Island
you won't get a new Darwin's finch
unless you breed it in an aviary
we were talking about fruit flies
AKA vinegar flies
and using chemicals and gamma radiation to
produce mutants
note how
like Thalidomide
these chemicals don't create
subtle changes
they wipe out the ability of a child to grow arms
or legs
a fly to have wings or eyes
if the DNA sequence is disrupted
it CANNOT be decoded
the start, stop and check digits in the sequence will
block expression
not allow deviant expression
evolution does not depend on
how many mutations there are
but on having variation that are sufficently
subtle
minor
to slip past the quality control checks

mostly, when you move to big school
a lot of jumbled impressions
impint themselves on your memory
we really honestly don't know how schools are managed these days
but our Ricker was at Coatham in the 1960s
and worked at Gillbrook in the 1970s
it seems to our Ricker's memory that
Gillbrook in the 1970s was
run by the teachers
we don't know who runs schools today but we
have the impression that they are run by
teaching assistants
what we can say without doubt is that
Coatham in the 1960s was run by
The Prefects
and the head boy in our Ricker's induction year was
Headley
naturally referred to as
Deadly Headly
Barker was the head and rarely caned anybody
corporal punishment was the real of the deputy head
a chemistry teacher who lived on the Coast Road
so we have a conflict
apart from Headley
the only senior boy whose name Ricker can remember is
Vasey
presumably Chubby Brown writes his own biography
and says he ran away from his home in Grangetown
not the Sunderland one
The Eston one
at the age of 14
you can say that sort of thing
without saying
but I went back within a week
so we don't know whether
Coatham's vasey was Roy
or perhaps a brother or cousin???
what we are a lot more certain about is
Royston Vasey - Roy Chubby Brown
live in one of these houses in

Corportation Road, in Redcar
with his second of three wives, Sandra
to be fair
there seems little difference between the
life story of
Chubby Brown
and that
husband of the wonderful
Debbie McGee
bright Grangetown lads who went to Coatham Grammar
in Redcar and these were the lads
grammar schools were invented for
Paul Daniels was the husband of Debbie McGee
son of the cinema operator in Grangetown
and there's yer typical
a technocrat moves into a
working class town
run a cinema needs skills
the boys inherit the skills but
the local white trash police
see somebody who does not
fit in
so they look for excuses to
run the brains out of town
we the brains around here
if we need a light bulb changed
we'll get a contractor in from London
true story...
Mo Mowlam was MP for Redcar and
secretary of state for Northern Ireland
so she had bullet proof glass in her windows on
Newcommen Terrace
when she stopped being an MP
the government decided the glass had to go
without the armed policeman standing at the door
somebody might 'ave nicked it
local lads wanted the work
no
taking window glass out is a specialist job
we'll have to send people up from London
what is really funny is
Dolland and Aitchison opticians had a
maintenance contract for all their shops
The Company was called
Chadwells
so
repaint the shop floor at the Guildford branch
a couple of lads in a Chadwells van
with pots of paint and brushes
proper DIY stuff
why is it called Chadwells?
'cos they from Chadwell 'eaf init
it's like Romford
like Essex
nobody in Surrey with skills
like what they've got in Essex

1st June 2021

we've had a think
we recall the question
what's the crack?
What's the craic?
What's happening?
what's news
that's Irish
and so, in the spirit of a word gaining currency
through multiple routes...
we can make a case for
pancrack meaning
having to attend a meeting in front of a
panel
and explain why you need charity
and this relates to the term
on the panel
being in receipt of sickness benefit
particularly from government
and so
rather than a sick note from a doctor
a person went before a panel of
worthies and made your case for assiatance
as opposed to having a right to
simply sign on
or perhaps like
how'd the Boro ger on
what's the pancrack?
what news from your appearance before the assistance panel?

Perhaps we could say that some moments in history
get overlooked
our Ricker has been struck by the somewhat overlooked
transition from
The Wilson Labour government
to
The Tory government of Ted Heath
we see both men as Oxford graduates
Wilson from a Northern background
a straight conventional bloke
Heath a Southern Softie
Gay, perhaps not actively gay
if active, in the closet
and they typify the contrast of
a Tory who was supposed to be Conservative
but was socially liberal
and a Labour leader who was socially conservative
or traditionalist
Ted Heath took the UK some way into the
European Community
the signal Wilson device that he removed is quite interesting
Wilson had a tax that was designed to
in a sense bring back
pre-war social norms
we have not got time to research it properly but
it was called
SET
Selective Employment Tax
employers had to pay the government
at the time
Inland Revenue
and Customs and Excise
were probably separate
employers paid a payroll tax
the first peculiarity of this was that it was
twice as much for each
male employee
as for each female employee
at first that may be seen as encouraging the employment of women
but the next bit brings that into question
because
Wilson was obsessed with the
Balance of Payments
in particualar
The Balance of Payments in respect of
Manufactured Goods
the extraordinary element of this tax was that
at the end of the financial year
the tax was refunded to the employer if
they could show that the employee had been engaged in
manufacturing
not
services
it was free - at the end of the tax year
to employ people in factories, mines etc
but you lost the tax if you were engaged in
leisure, entertainment, insurance
office work in general
so clearly
if you lost the tax if you weren't
making
and thus reducing imports of manufactures
and increasing export of manufactures
you lost half as much tax if
you employed women and not men
making making a proper job for a
male head of household
and offering services a
pin money passtime for
girls not yet married
and so, one assumes, the Wilson gov
expected investment to flow into
building factories not offices
and Ted Heath did away with that
paving the way for much more investment in
work opportunities for
women of all ages
since 2005 the UK has had
HM Revenue and Customs
interestingly?
the first use of SET came into force in 1777
when a tax on
male servants came about
so butlers and footmen and such were
a symbol of
I can afford to pay the tax and employ men
in my household
but for revenue purposes
the tax on male servants was directly linked to
a carriage tax
you paid tax to own a carridge
and tax for having a man to drive it
whatever may be said about
rates of tax
it was after the Second World War that
many many more people found themselves owing
income tax
and PAYE
Pay As You Earn
is a withholding tax
essentially people on a payroll
never get to see their income tax unless they
get a rebate
self employed people have to submit accounts and
pay their income tax for a particualr year
by a specified date
1944 for UK PAYE
1966 for SET
the Heath government 1970 - 74 did away with
SET and Purchase Tax
and replaced them with
VAT
Value Added Tax
VAT was invented in Germany
and somewhere else
and so VAT was communitaire
in line with EU thinking
the tax ia paid by the seller
who recovers it in the price paid by the customer
a peculiarity of the syatem is that
for tax purposes
goods sold by a seller who is not
VAT registered
are regarded as
Second Hand and thus exenpt
that is the raansaction is exempt
and the tax is paid by the last
VAT registered person or entity who
was involved to the transaction chain
and now
for some purposes
some goods sold through
ebay
are regarded as being sold BY ebay
and ebay has to collect the VAT
rather than pay it
this appears to be related to
sellers in Europe but not VAT registered
interetingly?
VAT was raised to compensate for the loss of
revenue when the Community Charge
The Poll Tax - was scrapped
but not reduced on the introduction of
council tax
VAT rates have been all over the place
and some things are presntly at a reduced rate
domestic energy costs for example
some at zero
some transactions fall outside the scope of VAT
even for registered entities
it is all very variable
for instance a short period in 2020
when VAT was not payable on PPE
Personal Protective Equipment
Purchase Tax was from 1944 to VAT
and some things - fur coats?
deemed utterly unneccasary
wer taxed at 100 per cent
but that was 100 percent of the
wholesale price or world trade price
or a tax to encourage exports and
discourage home sales of things
the government would rather have seen
exported
making exports easier than domestic sales
so Purchase Tax was a sort of
import duty
rather than a sales tax
Purchase Tax applied when most imports were from
The north coast of mainland Europe
Germany. Holland etc
and not as now from China
so Wilson was
lets sell to not buy from Europe
and Heath was not interested in that distinction
he just wanted more
trade
and it is not clear whether
if the Wilson concepts had endured
The North
would not have become
Post Industrial
and London
would not have prospered as it did in the
1980s and since
in the current context
Northern Men
are much more comfortable doing
wimin's work
office work
than their grandfathers
in the past men were asked for their trade when
applying for the
pancrack
British Slang
Social Security
especially as paid to the unemployed
the dole
1982 Pat Barker Union Street
She had saved it out of her social secuity money
the pancrack as she contemptuously called it
2012
Royston Vasey
sometime of Corportation Road Redcar
as Roy Chubby Brown
Rotston Vasety is the real name of
Chubby Brown and the origin of a
village name in comedy history
The League of Gentlemen
Common as Muck
I'll go on the pancrack I told the foreman,
but when I got to the dole office
they told me I wouldn't need to sign on
anyway
back to the pancrack
nobody knows where it comes from but
when you were bankrupt
you were allowed to keep the tools of your trade
and
broken pans used to be mended
so perhaps , only perhaps,
an early form of social security was
funds for the repair of the tools of the trade of
a bankrupt
in a sense, help for a worker unable to work
for lack of tools
rather than for incompetence or lack of opportunity
getting back to the point
early TV variety shows made reference to a person being
a sagger maker's bottom knocker
it's a very specific job in the potteries
a sagger is a protective shield
to keep individual poys separate in the kiln whilst firing
but the classic was
what's yer trade?
Coronation flag salesman
in other words
people who claim to be
out of work because the job their grandfather had
no longer exists
there was some validity to the claim of
troops returning for the Second World War stating that
a grateful nation owed these men
the exact same work opportunities their fathers had had
and in some ways there is a conflict here between
The North East of England
and
The North West of England
and London
essentially, in the Second World War
women in the North West and London
switched from factory work in the rag trade - clothing
no need for new clothes - make do and mend
to munitions factories
in the North East
the work was way too heavy for men
let alone women
and instead of the men going to war
and the women taking their jobs
as in the North West and London
the men stayed in their jobs
in the First World War there were two ways to
stay out of the forces
be a conscientious objector
be in a
reserved occupation
if you worked in a caol mine
a steel works
a shipyard
there was no way you could be replaced by
yer sister
and to that extent
men in the North East of England
took into their minds
I need a job that will be a reserved occupation
in the next war
fighting for the return of what we have called
brutalising employment
is a fight for
exemption from service
better to die from pneumoconiosis in yer 40s
than in the trenches in yer teens
we are now moving from
a fer of the call up - to the armed forces
to a resentment at the lack of opportunites to
go play soldiers
or as in the Navy...
travel around the world
meet interesting people
and
kill them

31st May 2021

do you remember the days when
there were no mobile 'phones and
you spent your entire holiday
fretting as to whether you had
left the gas on?
we are utterly stunned to see a bit of research on
the current UK Prime Minister's current and third wife
that is is some sense serial monogamy
in the sense of one official wife at a time
whatever one may say about the taxi driver involved
this woman woke up after a night out and
couldn't remember what had happened to her the night before
and so on the basis of
whatever it was it wasn't my fault
she claimed to have been drugged not drunk
that is all pre-Johnson
what is somewhat staggering is her own genesis
Mathew John Symonds has a wife and three children
his father was John Beavan, Baron Ardwick
his mother was Anne Symonds
The baron's wife was Gladys Jones
Josephine McAfee is not his wife but is the mother of
his daughter Carrie Symonds
it all revolves around
The Guardian Newspaper
The Independent Newspaper - Symmonds one of three founders
and the BBC
those details don't explain why the Johnsons were
married in Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral
but you do see a person - Carrie
how shall we say , driven by Roman Catholic Guilt
it's not my fault that I can't remeber what happened in that taxi
but with guilt comes penance
here we have the problem
Roman Catholics believe that their priests can
do deals with God on their behalf
and so it appears the deal done in
the Sugar Daddy House was
if we all are really thorough with our hand washing
God will see to it that most of us
don't get ill with CoViD

24th May 2021

Harry Potter is very popular
the Ricker has had a thought
we are bombarded in the media with
tidal waves of coverage about
a handful of women who
come to a sticky end
that we are distracted from the question
what sort of person does this
and
how do they become serial offenders?
we are thinking about three offenders
who fit a pattern and a couple who don't
the main one who does not fit this theory is
Fred West
the others are
a family doctor, a security guard, a police officer
a soldier
when we recruit police officers
we send them for initial training
since the 1960s in the UK
it seems a measure of drill
marching up and down a parade ground
has been dropped
but
attending initial training seems to be
seen by recruits as
attending Hogwarts
what we are getting at is a law enforcement culture that
divides people into
wizards and muggles
wizards and non-wizards
and so it is seen
not least by the likes of
Police and Crime Commissioners
as deeply disloyal to suggest that
any wizard is a Malfoy
we like the name Draco
Draco Malfoy
the original and possibly real Draco
gave us the word
Draconian
in the style of Draco
and the question
is it
draconian or Draconian?
something named after a person...
a person's names always begin with a capital letter
unless they are a self obsessed diva
what we are saying is
people who are regarded as
one of us
Paul Blart, mall cop - movie reference
they run around sticking harassment convictions on muggles
whilst letting wizards build up a massive
head of steam
in their offending
regarding Fred West
perhaps in Gloucester the role of
jobbing builder
does qualify you as a demigod
you wouldn' fine most cops able to use a screwdriver as
anything other than a stabbing weapon
in the mind of the person whose life is
brute force and ignorance
there is a line between
clever - being able to refuel a motor vehicle
and fenzied manifestation of mental illness
being able to recover a crashed cop car
and so
wizards are cool
muggles are not to be dismissed as boring
but
regarded as demented
demented meaning
lacking a mind
zombies
threatening the
zombie apocalypse
all those mindless bodies out there
threatening the
ORDER we learned of at our granny's knee
and they threaten to turn us to zombies with their
devilish EDUCATION
so like the dearly beloved
Taliban
burning schools
say the word
say chair
to your smart speaker
and a chair arrives from China
non of that spooky
getting on the tools
and making a chair
or having one made in that shed around the corner
a spell is just something you say to your smart speaker
Ricker once knew a lad who
guess what, taught at Gillbrook
he was a copper's kid
nobody much will remember
but the very first TV remote controls were
sonic not infrared
and so the kids would be watching kids TV
and dad cop comes home
and dad cop know that if he dumps his keys
in a particular way
the sound it made would
change the challel on the TV
a fanfare for the arrival of
dumb cop
this is their personality disorder
me me me me me
those ultra sonic TV remotes must have
driven dogs and other pets crazy
if you looked at the business end
there wasn't an LED, there was a metal plate

poiltics is changing
up until recent decades there were three groups of
voters in the UK
Labour, Tory, floating
similar in the US
both sides bt mainly The Labour
saw opposition politics as
using the media that supported them
to dig dirt on the private lives of
members of the government
these days two developments
many more floating voters and
regarding the
red wall etc
a sense that
firstly they want government and so they approve of the
Fixed Term Parliament Act
to cut down on the
'not another one'
rection to elections
and more importantly
the electorate see a party's time in opposition as
an opportunity to show how much
better off we would all be
if they won the next election
entertained as they are by
talk of the sex lives of the rich and famous
that is more and more in the realm of
entertainers and influencers
give us Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
not Profumo

24th May 2021

those people who were lucky enough to get a
middling to good grounding in
biological sciences
will remember
drosophila
the fruit fly
the people who used to supply secondary school
science labs
sold live fruit flies
you fed them on banana
the main contractors for Cleveland County Council were
Phillip Harris, Griffin and George and Macfarlane Robson
when our Ricker was responsible for an account
Macfarlane Robson were cheaper for chemicals
as opposed to apparatus
so Ricker ordered from MR
and Harry Hindle noticed that
Ricker and MR both had Robson in their name
so he took the chemistry segment out of his responsibilities
anyway
drosophila melanogaster
drosophila has a thing of the current age
variants
somebody who obviously knew about drosophila was on TV recently and
referred to the 'original strain' of corona virus 19 as
'the wild type'
now, some clever types - Thomas Hui, South and McVey
used a camptothecin and a couple of other
type 1 topoisomerase inhibitors that create
DNA double strand breaks in rapidly dividing cells
these tiny little flies are very useful in studying
the whole mutation scenario
we have lost patience trying to list the variants of
drosophila supplied to sixth form biology labs for experiments
from memory
do eyes
two good wings and two crumpled wings
no wings
stuff that's easy to see
we are getting to a point
the point is the passenger pigeon point
in your school lab
lfe in a specimen tube half full of
squashed banana
eyes?, wings?
just get in the way
it is quite possible that over an academic year
some variants that the school bought for you to
cross
to investigate genetics
will die out
when we come to corona virus
Andrew Pollard
we started 18 months ago with
Wild Type Corona virus 19
there is no longer a lot of it about
we have a lot of Kent and India and South Africa
nobody can tell whether the wild type will be
driven to extinction
but if any variant can go extinct
all variants can go extinct
clearly all variants can go extinct
the question is
can they all go extinct in conditions
we are willing to create?

sometimes this site feels like
analogies central
there are places in the world today
the USA for example
where guns and amunition are very familiar
and places such as the UK where they are not
we will depend today on some idea of
the structure and function of
the amunition of firearms
one of the passtimes of male youth
is to take over a public convienience
and stand in a row at the urinals and compete
to see which of them can get their
jizz
highest up the wall
you gonna be just the right age to
compete in that contest
the production, deployment, structure and function of
cum
is complex
women are - sorry - the base model of human kind
they have ovaries
very important them ovaries but
that's it, that's yer lot
and men have testes, testacles, knackeres
loads of names - that are the analogue of ovaries
the male version of ovaries
testes produce sprem and testosterone
ovaries produce eggs and oestrogens
males have two extra bits of kit
and these bits don't
hang down loose
they are
seminal vesicles
and the infamous
prostate glands
now we digress
cats
cats are induced ovulators
the she cat's baby making gear is like
a knackered old car
cats don't have periods
she cats wander around
for years on end not shedding as single egg
then one day
she gets cornered by a male - a tom
and if he rapes her
maybe thre or four times in the space of a few hours
her baby makes springs into life
she ovulates and fertilisation and kittens
and so
cat sperm need to take with them
a packed lunch
to keep them alive whilst she gets her act together
that packed lunch is provided by the
seminal vesicles
it's what makes the cum creamy
and the tom does not use a turkey baster
to get the cum up the alley
he needs
propellant
the propellant is
pretty much water
and it comes from the prostate
newly fired up prostate glans in early to mid teens
overdo it a bit
hence the marks on the wall above urinals
a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle
what did men ever do for us?
so consider the lilies of the field
all they get is
pollen
men give women
the enzymes to relax their birth passage
and
immunosupressants to
stop them chewing up their
eggs, sperm and embryos
and so the the maost important message
we once saw
possible on
Live at the Apollo
a mature female comic
saying
as a result of all this porn on the internet
the young men I date always seem to want to
come on my face
I don't need that
well with a face like a bag of spanners
she is now paying the price for declining all those
cum facials

22nd May 2021

please note..
this web site offers comment not advice
we don't fact check
we certainly don't amend historic posts
in light of changed
circumstances and regulations
it may be that
Working Tax Credit
is still available to people who are
not on Universal Credit have been narrowed
we will n0t say that we know the intent of
Sue Ryder Care
in staffing their Thirsk shop
when our Ricker worked there
BUT
it is possible that
an employer does not have the same
responsibilities in terms of
National Insurance Contributions
for an employee working
less than 16 hours a week
and so if they have one job and
can get it shared by two workers
they don't have to pay National Insurance on either
and neither qualifies for
Working Tax Credit
if this is so it should not be allowed
incidentally, anybody considering employing our Ricker
should know he - like a lot of geriatrics
has a full set of NI contributions and needs pay no more
neither would an employer be liable
however, what has happened over the CoViD is that
essentially The Treasuary has
slipped out a version of the
Social Wage
under the guise of
Furleau
the next step is a trial of a Social Wage
in Wales
strange how since the days of Thatcher
Wales now has from Scotland the sub-title
The Testing Ground
to sum up
as a sop to the extreme right wing of UK politics
working less than 16 hours a week
used to be regarded as
economically inactive
furleau has not ushered in Armageddon
and so steps towards a social wage have been made
experiments with a social wage in Scandinavia were
deemed a failure in that they did not lead to
recipients transitioning to
paid employment
in the future this test of success may be dropped
in some sense
making munitions for the armed forces that will be stored for a while
and then destroyed
has been seen as
gainful employment
but
making cheap jewelrey out of scrap
whilst on benfits
has been seen as
potential fraud

21st May 2021

there's this guy
some Dave Robson
write for
Teesside Live
this was 14th May 2013
it's an issue that has rocked Redcar
In June 2000
Lord Zetland
revelaed to the Getwet his dream of the futre of
horse racing n Redcar
sport of kings
the racing in Redcar is
flatracing of thoroughbreds
this is because it evolved out of
races on Coatham sands
it took to the turf in around
1872 and it hasn't moved since
now we need to put in some un-factchecked background here
if you look through the fence on
West Dyke Road
there is a swathe of green - grass
outside
the north end turn
the north end turn was moved
one trackwidth towards the infield
by - here's where we are not factchecking
some cove called Hetherington
once the henchman of that guy from Yuill homes
our Ricker met in Thirsk
and now the henchman of the bloke behind
Hartlepool scrap dealer - Able UK
he planned to give Lord Zetland some coin by building some sort of
condo - condominium - on the old track bed
Lord Zetland owned Redcar racecourse and
537 acres at the top of Yearby Bank
at Dunsdale
perhaps Lord Z didn't think Hetherington was thinking big enough
Lord Z's idea was to
move Redcar races to Dunsdale
and build Yuills - houses
all over Redcar racecourse
and
The Man from Del Monte - our Ricker
say no
Ricker say
build the new course first and then apply for planning permission to trash
150 years of tradition
and a tourist attraction within
spitting distance of those
fabled direct trains - Redcar to London and back
faced with the up front of building the new course
project died and Mr H went into the scrap business

entirely without permission we are now going to
tell the story of
Derek Douglas
the first bit is a bit vague
we will assert that he worked for
Cleveland County Council
we will suggest that at first he worked as a
meat inspector or food hygiene inspector
we cannot say why he stopped doin that but he
retrained as a secondary school biology teacher
proper teacher training - wrote a book on
tessellations?
perhaps it was just a thesis
valuable member of staff
at Gillbrook
played the piano at school assemblies
not a bad bloke all around
had a household consisting of himself
his stay at home wife, their son and their daughter
and his mother
he ran a coupe of old cars including a Hilman Imp
so
when Eston Grammar School was disbanded and
Gillbrook Secondary established in the building
he arrives as a scale 1 science teacher and
Mr Stark leaves to teach at the newly formed
sixth form college
and Janet Stark remains as head of biology at Gillbrook
and Janet Stark leaves her husband and kids
and after renting in
Great Ayton
buys a cottage on Stokesley Market Place
and then
Harry Hindle the head - makes Derek up to
Scale 2
BECAUSE HE NEEDS THE MONEY to support his family
and Janet leaves to train as a social worker
so it is that we are sooo frustrated that
one of these Tory governments
did away with
Working Tax Credits
with working tax credits
Derek could have had the money he needed
without being given the
devisive, disruptive PROMOTION

20th May 2021

do you know what a TIC is?
there was a time when our Ricker was
doing a teacher in Higher Education course
aside from his teaching
he had one a week classes as a student on the course
there was this one woman fellow student...
every week when we arrived we were told
she had had another promotion
or more precisely
another change of title
what we are proposing is
do your PhD prepare your lecture series
and then
act like a song writer who was a
one hit wonder
and
not Noddy Holder, he had loads of hits
sit back on the Royalties
for the rest of your life
and let the female students get on with
copping a dose of a
Nobel Prize Winner or an Olympic Champion

we are plagued with the two people who are always
at the hed of the queue for jobs in universities
1 I didn't come well out of my divorce
2 I've got kids
back in the long gone days of
men at work
the open plan office was developed
and then came the wimin
and then came
the cubicles
whether it is inate or learned
women strive to be a
matriarch
they expect to control a home
and they expect to have a home from home at work
Ricker has watched a woman receptionist
spend the first 90 minutes of a two hour shift
re-arranging a reception desk to HER design
you may expect that if a university department has
four professors
it will have two readers
a reader is a lecturer who's qualifiations come from
another university
eight senior lecturers
twenty lecturers
that would be how a school would be organised
in a university
there may be 4 professors
zero readers
6 senior lectureres
a TIC is an HOD with no D
literally
a TIC is a teacher in charge
and HOD is a Head of Department
so in a univerity
at least one Professor has to be
Head of Department
and therefore not teaching
and then there are
Visiting Professors
somebody from abroad
who needs a rest cure
and Professors Emeritus
a professor has a chair
a professorship may have a name
The Lucasian Professorship of Naval gazing
when you fund a professorship do you
1 think you are promoting intelectual endeavour
2 saving the next generation of women from
unneccessary cosmetic surgery

and when there are no men
gymnastics for example
how much more difficult to get a
conviction for harassment
when there are no
gender issues
a whole
law enforcement/media industry
based on
presenting
gender conflicts as
sexual assault
to get the groundlings' juices running
finds itself a bit stuck
trying to make money out of an
all female institution

every common soldier carries a
Field Marshal's Batton in his knapsack
every woman in academia has a
Queen of the World
award on the front of her desk
and so the universities say
we've given this woman this job because
she came out of her divorce badly
or this person who has lots of kids
and so we will create protective bubble around them
but the bubble becomes a
glass ceiling
and nobody can be hired to the department who would
endanger their mental health by triggering their
imposter syndrome
in other words
dole with dignity jobs
have to be
management jobs
fully funded to retirement
tenure
so that the incumbant is
never put under any sort of pressure
an Emeritus Professorship is an honour
a title
like a Damehood
and so our Ricker would never feel
safe
in any building or forum that
Janice Webster or Ron Douglas had access to

19th May 2021

it is quite interesting that
politicians are past masters at
not answering the question
this seems to be breaking down to some extent
a distinction is emerging between
not answering questions about their own brief
and
answering questions about other ministers' briefs

on a similar but different tack
these people who have
dole with dignity posts within universities
you can allow a tutor to tell
students of automotive engineering that
the moon is made of green cheese
but you can't allow them to tell students that
cars don't need brakes
speedway bikes don't have brakes
it is a part of their
psychological therapy not to tell them tO
zip it
or
shut the fuck up
there are two things goin on there
allowing university dons to spread misinformation
and
taking a comment out of context
should you never ever tell anybody who is not
a speedway rider or speedway mechanic that
speedway bikes have not brakes?
just for fear the comment will be taken
out of context?

18th May 2021

sometimes we think we are
pitted against nature
sometimes we see nature pitted against itself
this kelp frond settled on quite a small
rock or large pobble
and it was washed ashore before it got big

these fronds settled their
holdfasts
on the sea bed
and they grew big and strong over quite a time
but eventually the sea parted them from the seabed
and they washed up too

Dr Martin Luther King Jr
ws a civil rights campaigner who lived and died
a long time ago
mid 20th century
that was a time when
sound and video equipment was
expensive and difficult to operate
he toured the world
and gave exactly EXACTLY the same speech every time
so our uni dons could
what's a heavy teaching commitment?
12 week terms
one term a year teaching
one term a year exams
ten lectures a week
120 hours of lectures
record it once
take you a term
retire on full salary
call the cops if any of your studets
discover your email
we don't know whether
Ex-footballer Ian Wright
had a white step father
but if he didn't and complains about
being bullied by his father
he seems to be suggesting that
the fact that a predominantly white society
failed him by not protecting him from his
same race father and that
respect for minority ethnic values
constitutes white racism
there was a song of some popularity some time ago
what we need is a great big melting pot
big enough, big enough to take the world and all it's got
keeo it striiring a a hndred years or more
and turn out coffee coloured people by the score
minority people sent out a mixed message
do they want help to integrate
do the young ones want protection from their
traditionalist elders
or do they want
apartheid
where every function in society is
duplicated for each minority group/

16th May 2021

Today's effort may have significant consequences
specifically for the cosmetics industry
perhaps not
perhaps they know all about this alrady
our Ricker bears some significant
resentment
not hostility but saddness and frustration
towards his late mother and
the society in which she grew up
simply put
Ricker believes that
he would not have been a
forceps birth
if his mother had had more sex
before and whilst she was pregnant
there are lots of things in
semen, spunk, cum
including sperm
Ricker knows about one thing
the main enzyme in semen
the main one
that has a very significant bearing on
childbirth
it's called
fibrolysin
fibre lysin
fibre cutter or remover
we need to back track here
it has a half life of
24 hours
needs to be FRESH
it attacks and inactivates
fibrin molecules
the function of this enzyme is to
stop or reverse
clotting of the cum
so that it can flow freely
when extracted from
cattle
it can be made up into a cream
and as such is marketed by
Pfizer
as
Fibrolan
not currently in the USA
it assists with the healing of minor burns,
superficial wounds, ulcers surgical wounds and bruises
its function in spunk
is to
work with vaginal stretching
to make it permanent
with penetration prepare the
birth canal for childbirth
in theory
you could have semen injected past the hymen
via a very narrow tube
and get pregnant and
give birth by C section
and remain virgo intacta
but why?
when you are born
each apir of eyelids must be seaparated
perhaps before birth
but across the piece
physical interventions are needed to complete development

15th May 2021

from tme to time we get an item on TV about not using
peat
for anything
and as it happens
our Ricker has been experimenting
here we have a pile of
spent coffee grounds
and a pot of plants
grown in spent coffee grounds
seems to work
and you
DON'T need to spread bales and bales of peat
on your lawn

we will now consider two
couples at uni
janet and somebody
and Richard and Jane
in the couple
Janet and somebody
perhaps Janet was showing signs of
self assertion and so
her husband to be was given a
way better degree than her
to cement her dependence on him
Richard was way clever
and Jane was well connected
in this case
the reverse
Jane gets a 2:1 good but not exceptional
and Richard gets a third
setting aside the thought
a third makes Richard dependent on
the university for future employment
the arangement has the potentil to give
the rich girl the upper hand over the
poor genius
what we are positing is a propensity for
universities to engage in
social engineering
not simple straight academic teaching but also
life lessons
we have the power
the power to fuch you
you excessively young people
we experience every day the parallel universe nature of
society versus nature
what's the point of being rich if you can't
spend your money
arrangng the planet to your liking?
and so regarding the line
Charles Clore bought his son a chemistry set for christmas
ICI
if rich people want to set off
night light powered baloons...
and any moorland fires they cause will be on their moors
why should it be made illegal?
then we get granular
Lewis Hamolton's annual encounter in Australia
get a ticket for
driving a car whilst black
and so
want to play with drones?
get in the landy and drive a few miles across the estate
so that a law saying
you can't fly a drone within a mile of a house
won't apply to you actions
even though in pursuit of
universality and equality it applies to you
as an 'ordinary' guy
and so after a few
crash for cash
equivalent
who will rid us of this trublent scientist?
incidents
specifically the Caroline in back seat incident
Ricker comes to the conclusion
I can't have a partner because
despite all these being very pretty girls
I don't want one of them to
go with me if
I get 'suicided'
that's the altruism
the self preservation is
f I use public transport
I'll take dozens if not hundreds of people with me
so they probably won't do it
this is the
Gove -Turin axis
Gove more recently said
we've had enough of experts
after the Second World War
the establishment had
had the best of the scientific community
and drove the code breaker Alan Turin to suicide
as a signal to scientists that it was
time for the labdowning classes to resume control of
the country and the planet

14th May 2021

it is a little difficult to discuss religion without
getting too close
wewant to start here by referencing a
vox pop
voice of the people
clip, recently broadcast
I don't fear CoViD
I fear God
our problem with this is
you don't appear to fear
The Living God
you appear to fear the God of the Scriptures
we will stop trying to remember how to spell
Pentaetuch
and refer to the
Religions of the Five Books
in the world today there are three main religions of
The Five Books
they are Judeism, Christianity and Islam
the first of the Fve Books is
Genesis
the others are
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deutaronomy
the Jews refer to this colletion as
The Torah
in the History of
Occidental Religions
that is not Shinto, Buddhism, those Oriental religions
in the modern world
Occidental Religions arose in what is sometimes referred to as
The Middle East
First came Jeudeism
a reaction against
Egypt
and the ancient religions of Egypt
and Exodus is about the flight from Egypt
and Christianity
memorialised in
The New Testament
signals a two edged sword
it says
God is Love
Love thy neighbour as thy self
the problem is
it's not a set of rules
it's an instruction to
figure things out for yourself
against a background of
fundamental
not
detailed
beliefs
and it was a religion for
one tribe
one of the Arab tribes
The Jews
and over time
instead of spreading to
the other tribes
it spread to
The Roman Empire
and it evolved
from the earliest days
not in debate with other Arab tribes
but in conflict with the Roman authorities
and so
Islam is derived from Jeudaism
bypassing Christianity
the challenge of
interpreting scripture has been
flunked
now we want to step on quite a long way
to Darwin
clearly a Christian with
problems reconciling
the observed natural world
with
scripture
in 1871 he published a book called
The Descent of Man
but wth the full title
The Descent of Man, and selection in
relation to Sex
it is about
well we shall say it is about
how, in essence, a point was reached where
evolution was driven
not by
Natural Selection
or Survival of the fittest
but by
fashion
a flat face became fashionalble in
China
people evolved flat faces
peacocks
no way that huge easy to spot
hunk of turkey
was best fitted for anything but
impressing the ladies
and then there was
Jacob Bronowski
and he decided to entitle his book and TV series
The Ascent of Man
long before that was
Merlin and King Arthur
and
The Sword in the Stone
we bring The Ascent of Man and
the sword in the stone together today
the story is
there was ths sword stuck in a stone
and in an echo of
David and Goliath
the weedy little kid was the only person
able to remove the sword from the stone
in a phrase
knack over brute force and ignorance
but, if we step back
if we consider
making a sword out of a stone
rather than
pulling a sword from a stone...
we are actually thinking
Merlin and his side-kick Arthur
developing a process for
smelting iron from iron ore
as an aside
people knew about iron and used it
before smelting was invented because
some
meteorites are made of iron
and daggers were made from forged meteorites
a sword from a stone
not a sword from a gift from heaven
and in the Ascent of Man
Bronowski describes the
ritual
by which
for a better term
Chinese
priests
converted iron
into a much better sword than a
ground down bit of meteroite would ever be successful process
based on
zero understanding of
chemistry and metalurgy
and essentially
wars such as the First and Second world wars
and mass production of armaments
reliable armaments
driving people to cut the
fancy dress crap
and get the process down to a t
by understanding it
there is a suggestion the down to a t means
down to a title
in other words
something so well understood in detail that
it only needs to be referred to
not constantly re-explained

13th May 2021

we are as guilty as anybody of
thinking in siloes at tme
not thinking outside the box
we want give 1974 in the UK
a bit more consideration
this requires consideration of
three UK Prime Ministers
Harold Wilson
Ted Heath
Jim Calaghan
essentially Wilson started out
from Oxford University
through many jobs in National Politics
to be PM during a time of
Post War boom - the swinging sixties
the 70s were not as bad as the
20s or 30s but the
60s and the 80s were a lot better than the 70s
Wilson was Labour
he lost an election to the Tory Ted Heath in around 1970
and Heath was from Oxford and
was in that Liberal Virtue Signaling tradtion
at the beginning of the 1970s he set about
shall we say
amalgamating Local Authorities
bundling groups of little local authorities into
bigger units for economy of scale etc.
the thing that hit was
not a slump but the end of a boom
we refer fromtime to time to the difference between
poverty and inequality
in a sense The British got soft
the problem was characterised as a
balance of payments crisis
instead of making things we began to import them
spending as a nation more than we earned
this was allied to the switch from
gas derived from coal - town gas
to gas taken direct from the rocks
North Sea Natural Gas
this put demand for coal under severe stress and
by 1974 there was a miners strike
and all that move to the middle
move from one national governmet and a myriad of
parish councils
to County Boroughs and Metropolitan Authorities
no longer looked - in the current term
sufficiently
granular
there have never been any coal mines on Teesside
but when faced with the likes of
The Battle of Orgrieve
police versus miners
it became attractive to have some - industrial - areas
have a very different kind of policing from other areas
and hence British Steel were not lone actors in wanting to see
Cleveland Police hived off from North Yorkshire Police
some areas to have a paramilitary - Northern Ireland style
police force
the battle of Orgrieve happen in 1984 not 1974
so there was a decade of rising tensions
and Orgreave was a Britush Steel Corporation
plant for turning coal into coke
a coking plant or coke works
to return to the beginning
Wilson from Oxford succeded by Heath from Oxford
as the 70s unfolded The Labour could just about
hold a majority in parliament
but Wilson got fed up
famous quote, unverified?, to his wife
nar Mary, listen to this
relaying yet another jackass comment from amongst the
herding of cats
his job had become
and so he resigned
and throwing his hands in the air
The Labour Party throwing their collective hands in the air
they elected, appointed, Jim Calaghan
to lead the Labour Governemt
the only person to have been
Chancellor of the Exchecquer, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary
before becoming Prime Minister
but having had
NO Higher Education
not been to any uni. let alone Oxford
a plague on all your houses
a washing of hands by the elite

12th May 2021

we now have steel above the hoarding level
on the Cinema on the Sands project

we found a list of Police Services or Forces in the UK
it doesn't include
Cleveland Police
approximately
Cleveland Police has 1,274 officers
most will be full time but this may be the
full time equivalent number
on th list this puts Cleveland between
Gwent at 1,311
and Northumbria at 1,272
it polices 585 square kilometers
and around half a million people
it was formed in 1974
by removing it from
North Yorkshire Police
North Yorkshire has 3,155 officers
West Yorkshire has 5,342
South Yorkshire has 2,447
The Health and Safety at Work Act
HASAWA
came into force in
1974
there seems no reason why
Cleveland Police was crated
in the sense that
North Yorkshire
was not over large
it is interesting that
Cleveland Police's first headquarters was
the former steel industry offices on
Ladgate Lane
could it be that British Steel said
end HASAWA supervision from
Northallerton
and we will gove you a free office complex
change boundaries at no cost to the public purse
turning Teesside into a sort of
gulag
with company not publicly controlled police
and treatng
union leaders and councilors
like
trusties
in a prison camp

10th May 2021

there is at least one person from the military
permanently posted to
Sugardaddy House
10 Downing Street
can we use the troops for this
can we use the troops for this
can we use the troops for this
AND they used military people for
testing
track and trace
and it was SUCH a fuck up
they actually managed to keep
the miltary
for the most part
out of the vaccination programme
and behold
something 'government' actually worked
our Ricker's having another of his flashbacks
this is about a reunion for Teesside BAYS
British Association Young Scientists
so it would have been the early 1970s
this was drinks at
The Highfield on Marton Road in Middlesbrough
and Ricker had taken Mark Jordan in his car
so although the idea was not then known
Ricker was the
Designated Driver
so when Mark asked him what he wanted
Ricker said
a tonic and bitters
and Graham Frank was there
his parents ran
The Mermaid in Marske-by-the-Sea
so Mark comes back from the bar and hands Ricker
a tonic and half of bitter
and weel it was only a half
and Graham said
you should have asked for a
pink tonic - the barman would have given you a
tonic and bitters
so it was only a half so Ricker drank both drinks he was given
then Caroline asked
could you run me home?
Hartlepool
OK
so Ricker and Mark and Caroline in the back seat
this was mid 1970s and the car was a
1970 Triumph 2000 estate
leather seats 90 horse power engine...
OK thye set off for Hartlepool and they are
on a dual carriageway in Billingham
and this plain clothes blond in an unmarked Ford Escort
attempts a
hard stop on them
and she reverses her passenger window up to Ricker's drivers window
and it transpires
she's a police officer
who was on
Social Duty in The Highfield
and she thought Ricker had drunk
a gin and tonic and a pint
and it took her all the way to Billingham to catch them up
bunch of fuckin' arse 'oles cops
so the cop winds down her window and looks at Ricker
then she looks into the back seat
and there's Caroline looking for all the world like
Princess Ann
and she just naffs off
young Mark was in need of the facilities
by the time
well, well before the time
they reached Hartlepool
it's a sort of version of
The Emperor's new Clothes>BR> it's just to frigtening to think
that the police are bunch of
drink and drugs addled fuck wits
so we set them beyond reproach

9th May 2021

we've done just a little more research into this
1579
New Albion
Sir Francis Drake claims
what is now
Point Reyes
about half way up the
Calfornia coast in the USA
for Queen Eizabeth the First
and names it
New Albion
and thepeople who always want to put a
positive spin on everything....
suggest that
Albion
was to the Romans
the land
beyond The White Cliffs of Dover
even the Romans knew that the White Cliffs of Dover
make up a very very small proportion of the coastline of
The British Isles
but choose your own explanation

one of the results of being retired
and demented
is that things pop up into your mind from the past
at the present moment
Ricker is remembering his reaction to being a student
at Newcastle-upon-Tyne medical school
and he and his class mates being required to
descend to the basement
to use a service corridor
when moving from one side of the building to the other
a couple of the tutors had
TD
listed as part of the
letters after their names
it could have meant member of the Irish Parliament
but it actually stood for
Territorial Distinction
these people were in the Territorial Army
Army Volunteers
and part of Ricker's reasoning for leaving was
life's too short for this sort of time wasting
hierarchy and tradition and ritual
just sayin'
Sliding Doors
and incidentally
in the service clossets on that corridor were
plackards reading
Thatcher
milk snatcher
something to do with Margret Thatcher
ending free school milk
she said
there is no such thing as society
only family
we see a lot of that from South Asia
and quite a bit from the USA right now
Ricker knew he was ill
he didn't want to be rich like his brothers
he wanted to know what was wrong with him and
he found medical science fascinating
but he wasn't driven to
help other people
most of the people who need help from the NHS
need it because they refuse to
follow advice
try to advise a person from a sink estate
about how to look after themselves and
they will ask
are you saying I'm stupid?
chippy
a chip on their sholder
sometimes you just say
life's too short...to....
whatever
amongst the things our Ricker
allowed to pass him by was
learning The Galic
French, Latin studied to O level
not The Galic
one of our Ricker's grandads
died 4 years before Ricker was born
William Robson 1863 - 1948
and his dad was Thomas William Robson
Mary Eleanor Moorhead 1866 - 1928
and amongst other sprogs she had a daughter
Janet Isobel Robson - Jenny
by the bye she married John Clough
the brother of Joe Clough
the father of
Old Big 'ead
The Damned United
Brian Clough
so we know Jenny died in 1947
but we don't know when John Clough
died or otherwise separated from
Auntie Jenny
so far as we know
Auntie Jenny and Grannie Moorhead
lived in grandad's house in Haverton Hill
and the family were not a paragon of
Victorian or Edwardian virtue
we are confused as to which generation these two women belonged
that is
was that 'Granny Moorhead'
or was 'Granny Moorhead's mother' whatever
Autie Jenny died in grandad William's house
and she had spent many years in a chair
by the fireside
and the undertakers had to remove the front room window
to get her body out of the house
when she died
a large lady
not the subject of this little tale
Granny Moorhead
as we said probably the one 1866 - 1928
'had only The Galic'
she did not speak English
and so to Scotland
Scotland as a word derives from a
rather unflattering term the Romans had for
them north of the wall
Hadrian's Wall
and all these layers of history since then
we have
BBC Alba
a television channel broadcast in Galic
so there are questions about the choice of
Alba
as the name of anything
it used to be a trade name for the likes of television sets
however a galic speaker may pronounce Alba
Plymouth Albion
West Bromwich Albion
Albion is an alternative for Britain
Alba is some sort of reference to Scotland
and albino relates to having no pigment
being devoid of colour - totally white
and so the now abandoned term
Albion
may have referred to
the place where the white people live
so to choose Alba
as the name for a political party pursuing
National Independence
could be construed as
racist
Albion Rovers is is a semi-professional soccer club
based in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire

8th May 2021

The simple take away from the recent elections
in Great Britain
note because there - by fluke - were no
contests in Northern Ireland
we can say Great Britin and
have the option of not saying
the UK
the take away is
in times of peril
voters have gone with the concept
hold on tight to nurse
for fear of something worse
in other terms
don't swap horses in mid stream
Scotland stays Scottish National
Wales stays Labour
England stays Tory

to us Wales is a mystery
we have a Labour leader who
repeats everything he says in
both English and Welsh
as if he were the leader of the
Welsh Nationalists
what is the significance
in British politics of the number
5 million?
it is the population of
Yorkshire
it is also the population of
Scotland
however, the population of
Wales
is
3 million
on top of that
Wales appears to be three countries
perhaps two
in political terms
Wales appears to be
a small country with a
huge lake in the middle
there are labour people in the
North East
and Labour people on the
South Coast
and htes people are
what shall we say
4th or 5th generation immigrants
attracted by jobs in heavy industry
it is on the surface such a contrast to
other immigrant communities
these pseudo Welsh
present themselves as
fiercely and proudly Welsh
whereas most other immigrant communities
celebrate their cultural roots
a apst leader of the Welsh Nationalists has
just lost her seat
we are here entirely talking about seats in
the Welsh Assembly
not the British parliament in London
she has just lost her seat and she
struggled to learn Welsh when
she frst became leader of the Nationalists

hearing the Welsh Labour leader
prattle on in Welsh
seems to the outsider as though he is
mocking the locals
in broad terms
we can characterise North and South Wales as
Post Industrial
we are aware that the immigrants are
crowded into a small percentage of the
land area of Wales
perhaps they are feeling timid about
spreadng out into the hills and mountains
and speak Welsh to cement their right so to do

Scotland is a different matter
we need a bit of European Geopolitical History here
we forget that
Great Britain, France, Holland (the Dutch),
Portugal and Spain
were the nations that had
Global Empires
we forget that
although there were many German
settlers or immigrants in
North America
and Africa
Germany never ever had
much in the way of a global empire
and much of European Geopolitics revolved round
Roman Catholic or Protestant
hence William of Orange as British Monarch
and to some extent the present
British Monarchy of German origin
The British have chosen
Protestant and foreign
Heads of State
to be
neutral referees
rather than
Leaders
such as Napolean
and so
Scotalnd has aligned with France
and Ireland with Germany
in the no longer so recent past

the whole thing about
Scottish Independence
revolves around
Teretorial Waters
we speak now of
fishing waters
but in the recent past
fishing waters overlaid
oil and gas reserves
Scotland saw England
extracting fossil fuels from a sea bed that
could be Scottish
if Scotland were independent
but North Sea oil and gas
were bound to run out
it was always going to be
boom and bust
all the English had to do was
play for time
retain control of Scotland until the
oil and gas ran out
fifty years ago - perhaps a little longer
there were two cities in Scotland
Edinburgh and Glasgow
in the lowlands
now there are three
Edunburgh, Glasgow and
Aberdeen
and Scotland has a situaton where
Aberdeen has supplanted
Dundee
on the East Coast of Scotland
and what can we say?
Aberdeen was never
a centre of brutalising
dangerous, polluting industry
it was always a dormitory and
bulk port
for activities happening way out at sea
we can say
Aberdeen financial capital of Scotland
Edinburgh cultural capital of Scotland
Glasgow? post industrial relic
the people of Scotland are not
immigrants
not third or 4th generation immigrants
not 10th generation immigrants
they are the
First Nations people of Scotland
in the vast majority
and their nationalism
of all the nationalisms in The UK
is the most racist
now it is not
independence for the oil revenues
it is now
independence to
keep the chattering classes of North London
out

perhaps we should round off this summary by
considering
Churchill, The Black Dog, University Towns
and chattering
Churchill's Black Dog was
his depression
and clearly we may say
we could analyse him as a candidate for
a diagnosis or bipolar or
manic depression
the point is
beats working for a living
Churchill went in for a bit of painting
a bit of bricklaying - hard landscaping in the garden
when you
make decisions for a living
there is some tendency to
often not have anything to
show for your efforts
he laboured mightily
and brough forth
a mouse
in a sense
in a factory
your efforts either go
to despatch
or
to the recycling
you won't stay for long
if all your efforts end up in the recycling
the whole idea of
education
from a family perspective is to
get a white collar
preferably salaried career
a context in which
your intangible output
is neither sent ot
despatch nor recycling
upside you keep your job
downside you never have anything to
show for your efforts
and so
university towns are all for
a social wage
tenure
getting paid whatever
and to distract
the displacement activity
is to make ritual sacrifice of the occalsional coleague
who has broken some unwritten
code of etiquette
a way to unstabel concept for the
solid reliable Scotts

we'll put down a couple of markers here
The 'Weslsh Nationalists'
Meibion Glyndwr
?? people of Glendower??
set fire to homes owned as second homes
by people working and living
Monday to Friday
in England
between
1979 and the mid 1990s
sometimes you just can't win
take rashoning
in the Second World War
food was rationed
so you didn't visit anybody or anywhere
without taking your food with you
as people visiting the likes of Wales
took their food with them
and got grief for not
buying it in local shops
food galore in Wales
come and buy some
off ration
no thanks
that's illegal
during World War 2
around 110,000 children were evacuated to Wales
some were from London
some were from the industrial
South Wales Coast
so this was how the
Rich street urchins of London and the South East
learned about the existance of Wales
and in time they got proper jobs and
bought homes that
the forestry workers and game keepers
of
La Wales Profonde
as in la France Profonde
couldn't be arsed to tart up
France Profonde
a zone - most of - France that
'escapes the dominant ideologies of the
hegemony
of Paris
Deep France is seen as
profoundly localistin outlook
and to be receding in the face of
international mass culture

6th May 2021

we will make a note here about the
Hartlepool parliamentary election
the wimin's candidate - 140 votes
Killick, the guy they tried to ban
because he photographed a woman
248 votes

there should be a lesson here
people are not willing to
waste their votes by
using them in petty
playgound clan disputes over gender
and overwhelmingly voted for a woman
to get power
not compensation
Hartlepool now has its first woman MP
first Tory for 50 odd years
and nothing to do with
The Wimin

4th May 2021

today's word or phrase of the day is
grandfathered in
a grandfather clause or
grandfather policy
or
grandfathering
is
is a provision in which
an old rule continues to apply
to some existing situations
while a new rule will apply to
all future cases
those expempt from the new rule are said to have
grandfather rights
or
acquired rights
or to have been grandfathered in
as an example
UK driver ROBSO 911257 TB9ST was licenced to drive vehicle groups
A D E G H J M N
a class H licence is for
track laying vehicle, steered by its tracks
until
14 05 1981
BUT
he had never passed or sat a driving test
his right to drive was greandfathered in
many people driving on UK roads today
have never passed or sat
a driving theory test
the secondary word or the day is
derogtion
in civil and common law
the partial - or in part - susppension of a law
as opposed to
annulment, repeal or obrogation
so garndfather is the reverse or
and stand in defiance of the legal principle
lex posterior derogat priori
a subsequent law derogates and earlier one
in Roman Catholic Cannon Law it
is distinct from a
dispensation
a dispensation relates to the person or corporate body
not the law
so what we are saying here is
The UK government was
'persuaded' to close
Redcar Steel works
because it was a
21st century new build
and if it existed and operated
the government would have to acknowledge that it had
either proroged rthe Health and Safety at Work act
in respect of
those existing steel works
not adoptng Redcar's new technology
or would have had to offer a dispensation to the
owners and operators of
Port Talbot and Scunthorpe
to continue using 19th century technology

so that
in general
old plant can be patched up
but new plant has to comply

so here's our cunning plan
Mr Tata has a steel works in Port Talbot
it's knackered
he wants to replace it with a new 19th century style steel works
HM Government would perfer he builds a Redcar style 21st century one
he say give me the difference
Ł 500 million to Ł 1 billion
HMG say
cunning plan B
let's HIDE Redcar
and permit a new 19th century style steel works
in Port Talbot
and when it's built
ta da
look what we found in Redcar!
is this what they call
the biter bit?

3rd May 2021

Today we will be referencing another
real not yet dead person
and so we have researched him a bit
he i currently 84 years old and
Ricker's only meeting with him was
within the past ten years
this chap had a positive start
the thing is when somebody rises to prominance
they can edit their biography but..
this chap was an engineer
in his early career he had something to do with
'the famous hyperbolic paraboloid roof of
The Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, London
he went on to have a partnership with
professor David Bellamy
at that point perhaps, alarm bells may ring
David Bellamy - if this is the same David Bellamy was
a global warming denyer
on the one hand we have David Bellamy saying
global temperature rises are
a blip
a reverse ice age
and our man of the day is most famous for saying
brng your industry to Teesside
it's so filthy
no matter how polluting your process may be
nobody will notice
in the mean time the most famour company he had worked for was
Yuill Homes
he has 5 children and is or was
Deputy Lieutenant of County Durham
when our Ricker met him he was living near Thirsk

in this context we may say
both these people were involved in
environmental issues but
David Bellamy was somewhat naieve
and our man was more
knowing
but still a bit indiscrete
once interviewed on TV about a home he had restored
he was asked
how much do you expect to get for this when you sell
as much as anybody is daft enough to pay
we have referenced many times
in effect
Redcar is consdered not to be
a one horse town but
the home of twin Hercules
British Steel
and
ICI
steel and bulk chemicals
what is a little below the surface is that
in the mid 20th century these industries were
vital to Britain's National Security
and as such
British Steel was manned by ex-cons
and ICI was staffed by ex military
and all this together called for the mother of all
Dangerous Dogs Acts
and this was the mid 1970s'
health and Safety at Work Act
the pre 1970 installations of ICI and British Steel
in Redcar were built under
considerations of
wartime expediency
the people working there were the wartime and post war
equivalent of
Bevin Boys
the men who by lot were selected to
work in the mines
rather than go to the front
realistically the culture built up was
no health and safety on these sites but
the innocent public must be kept well away
hence the legacy of
Tight Security
we now have a Free Port
this area is a Free Port
but this is confined to
economic advantages - tax reliefs
and although some think that BrExit means
we can take The Tees Valley
back to the 1950s
this is not so
it is a risk
but it is not so
so please don't come to Teesside and expect a
Health and Safety at Work Act-free zone

2nd May 2021

for clarity...
photos of Teesworks
East Coast Path
Saltburn to Newport Bridge
the phot of the siding was taken
from a bridge on the path
the siding runs alonglide the path
obviously, fenced off
he path runs across the entrance to TeesWorks
and the boundary line is clearly marked
as in the pictures by a
railway crossing style barrier
get your tanks off my lawn
Mr Mayor
from the official web site
businesses found on this section of the path
No businesses found
reference
Walk the England Coast Path

Denny's is a garage on Redcar Sea Front
three pionts to start
back in the day
Mrs Denny was the secretary or such of
Redcar Business Association
Denny's regualrly service cop cars
Denny's is also as
dive shop
sells wet suits
fills air tanks, etc
back in the day when the internet was new
Denny's set up a web cam
on the top of their building
trained on the rocks over the road
so that diving enthusiasts could have real time
information about sea conditions
some old biddy complained and it was taken down
now the building has sprouted at least
ten cameras
get with the programme!

have you heard the Sam about
th boyscout and the
Swiss Army Knife
boy scout says to his mates
I'm fed up that I've still not had sex
they say
easy
get a swiss army knife
and take it up the hill to
Malinda
she'll sort you out
he goes and is ushered in and
Malinda takes the knife and
open a drawer to put it away
the scout sees in the process that the drawer is
jam packed full of swiss army knives
why did you want another one when you have so may?
a boy scout will do anything for a swiss army knife
even fuck a raddled old hag
after this
go see yer gran
about getting a replacement

sweet Balinda
the peasants call her the goddess of doom
she speaks good English and invites you up into her room
and you're so kind and careful not to go to her too soon
and she takes your mind and leaves you howling at the moon

1st May 2021

we've been plumbing the shallows of
our Ricker's mind again
so this is a bit disjointed?
Esau
Esau sold his inheritance
for
a mess of pottage
and this is the thing with
girls and sex
in an 'advanced' country
people have in the past developed the concept of
marriage
currently very big in
emerging nations
such as
India
it's all about all this
lottey win scale
new money
need to spend it on looking good
need to keep it in the family
so there must be a family
so there must be marriage
essentiallythe drive to
suppress child sexuality and to
promote the concept
if you like it
put a ring on it
is about
preserving a girl's
maidenhead
until the family can secure a good price for it
use her virginity as a bargaining chip in the
forging of an inter family alliance
here we will contrast
developing South Asia
with
underdeveloped
South East Asia
in South Asia you protect and preseve
a child's innocence'
to use as a bargaining chip
in South East Asia you
KNOW the girl isn't going to
make a good marriage
so you hire out her body whilst she is
still young enough to attract a decent price
that set of ideas comes from
do you remember when 'they'
destroyed Jimmy Saville's gravestone
we were thinking
afte Phil the Greek
designed his own funeral
has Boris the Spider
set to and designed his own
headstone yet?
perhaps it could read
true holyness of heart
which takes the humbler part
and ower it's own
short Cummings
weaps with loathing
or perhaps more simply
there's no fool like
an old fool

30th April 2021

here's a real person who is still alive
and probably has lawyers etc
so we must say
our Ricker MAy have met her once
novelist Pat Barker
was born in
Thornaby-on-Tees
when it was in North Yorkshire
it is now in
Stockton-on-Tees
she was educated at the
London School of Economics
International History
and at
The Universty of Durham
she taught History and Politics until 1982
that would be six years after
our Ricker graduated
Pat barker's work never makes comfortable reading
She explores, with an unflinching eye,
subjects such as
prostitution, homosexuality, child rape
incest, mental illness
pacifism, war, and murder by minors
hshe has 2 children
and?
her daughter is novelist Anna Ralph
and her late husband was
David Barker
1922 to 2009
he was a British zoologist and neurologist
specialising in animal neuroanatomy
he was Professor Emeritus
of zoology at the university of Durham
Durham England
a university of Durham in the states has a stronger web prescence
he is honoured by the annual award of the
David barker Prize in Zoology
in February 1963 he published
Zoology and Medical Research
from 1941 to 1943
David Barker studed anatomy at
The University of Oxford
UNDER THE TUTELAGE of
John Zachary Young
J Z Young
1907 - 1997
if you don't know
if you don't know, why don't you know?
one of the most influential biologists of
the 20th century
and?
David Barker was our Ricker's
head of department
when he was at Durham
what a simple scan of the internet may not tell you is
David Barker specialised in
muscle spindles
and the only other person specialising in
muscle spindles was
Bernhard Katz
muscle spindles are
fibres within voluntary muscles such as
the muscles of the upper arm
they are fibres that are modified into
strain guages
Sir Bernhard Katz was a German-British physician
he shared the 1970 Nobel Prize
with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von Euler
so
somwhere our Ricker has a copy of
Nerve, Muscle and Synapse
on the one hand
it does irk our Ricker from time to time to be described as
self taught
on the other hand
when you get cramp
as our Ricker does from time to time
yer muscle spindles have been
tweeked
they have got over sensitive and sent
a panic message to yer brain
the ladybird books of medsun
say cramp is due to
too little salt
too much caffine
dehydration
the great Ricker has heard that the
Pfiser CoVID vaccine
is attached to the muscle fibres
not too sure what that means
on the face of it
the suggestion is that the trigger molecules
are held hostage within the muscle
as opposed to the AstraZenica vaccine that is held
n a more conventional location of detention
somewhere like the thymus or bone marrow
there is a point ot make here
we assume that the current CoViD vaccines are all
IM
there has been some loose talk about
children getting CoViD jabs
one of the prime reasons for not giving CoViD vaccinations
to children
is that these days
vaccines for children are not generally IM
we would expect any modern vaccination for children to be
nasal
drops they are invited to snuffle up their noses
there would have to be entirely separate trials for those
but if a nasal version became available
it may be possible to administer it to
adults who are
petrified of needles
IM stands for
Intramuscular
and so we have some doubts a child version of
the Pfiser vaccine will ever be developed

28th April 2021

we are sorry that we have no time to
make this look better

the prime comment of the day is
even if the food you buy has a best before
a week head
or a use by six months ahead
if you bring it home and
open it
and somebody or something -sucah as a fly
who or that is carrying something infectious
on feet hands or mouthparts
and the food becomes containated with
something such as
e.coli, salmonella, or norovirus
irrespective of the dates on the pack
that food becomes
instantly dangerous
but

we wish to just insert a place marker here
there is a mid point in food safety between
food poisoning
and
food spoilage
the classic in this 'gap' is
ergot
the ergot fungus produces a toxin as it grows on grains
mainly rye
and the geain is worse than
having an off taste that means people won't buy it
as a result of fungal activity
it contains a toxin that may kill them
however, it does not contain a
pathogen that will
infect them and live and grow within them
such as norovirus, e. coli, salmonella

a lot of people have heard of
Louis Pasteur
his early work was on
causes of food spoilage
we labour under the assumption
that education theses days is essentially the same as
fast food related sports sticker collecting
learn, stick in album, forget
no concept that you may attend an exam in summer
where you may be required to
guess what it was you wrote about in erly autumn
on that basis we reckon it is not so fatuous to explain
Pasteur's preliminary experiments
back in the days when everybody
was surrounded by antiques
in schools - some schools
Pasteur's game changing experiment was repeated
broth is a sort of soup
like dissolved OXO cubes
so you have a set of flasks
a flask - an erlenmeyer flask of some such we forget
in this case a glass vessel
flat bottom, conical sides rising to a neck
that can be stoppered
you put some water and an OXO cube
meat extract cube
into each of three or four such flasks
get ehw water good and hot as per OXO drections
whilst they are still hot
set one aside
stuff cotton wool into the neck of a second
bung a stopper into the top of another
bung a stopper with a straight glass hollow tube
like a chimney, running through it
the last one is as before but the glass tube is bent
into what they call a swan neck
it goes up, curves back down
and curves back up again
the theory is
the open necked flask will go off
the stoppered flask will not go off
the cotton wool bunged flask will not go off
the flask with the chimney
will eventually go off
and the flask with the swan necked chimney will not go off
to cut to the chase
it is thus demonstrated that in is not
air
that causes food spoilage
but something in the air that settles out into the broth
open flask - air and suspended particles have access
cotton wool - air can get in or out but particles are
trapped by the cotton wool
stoppered - air and particles are excluded or trapped as appropriate
as at the start
flask with chimney - a small cross sectional area through which
particles can settle
in the case of the flask with the swan necked chimney
air can get in and out - gasses that is
but settling particles are trapped at the bottom of the
curve of the swan neck
this demonstrates two things
first and not yet universally accepted
food spoilage agents do not arise due to
spontaneous genertion
if you heat the food and seal it
as in a tin can or a glass jar
it will not spoil
it may mature, but it won't spoil
tins of baked beans neither mature nor spoil
bottles of wine mature but don't spoil
secondly
it is not air or gases that cause spoilage but
particles that settle on the food that do
this is the bit where people don't kink outside the box
they think in siloes
if you buy cheese it's use by date is way, way beyond
what would have been the use by date for the milk
that was used to make the cheese
you may be fmiliar with the adverts for
Cravendale
'it's not milk'
it's not milk as we know it
ilk as we know it is
either raw
or
Pasteurised
Cravendale is
Pasteurised AND microfiltered
if you boil milk
you kill everything that is living in it
and you destroy the taste
Pasteurisation
reduces the bacterial load to
a point where the shelf life will be acceptable
any food that
goes off
has either been
unwrapped
or it always had spoilage microbes in and on it
and the point of
going off
is the point where they have just bred to
an unacceptable level
this is
QUITE DIFFERENT from
eating food that has been contaminated withMBR> e. coli, or salmonella, or norovirus
you chuck out the cream or buttermilk
as soon as you see the mold that
makes your stilton blue
mold on cheese OK
mold on cream not OK
not a health issue
a matter of taste
but
also a matter of knowing
I TRUST the shop to sell me cheese with safe mold on it
I don't trust the shop to sell me cream with safe mold on it
there shouldn't be mold on buttermilk
even though it says
cultured on the label
invisible amounts of mould OK
as soon as they become visible
bin it
but the pack with the invisible mold
the culture
has already made an impact on your immune system anyway
if in doubt follow the advice on the label
but don't go all
Alan Partridge
on people who know hat they are doing

26th April 2021

Our Ricker is presently
making up for a mis-spent youth
wgilst he was frittering away his youth
the the biology lab
Hawkins
he who's dad was the service manager at the
Renault
garage on the Trunk Road
was spending his break times in the school workshops
hawkins made a little solid wood housing for
a sound system switchover contraption Ricker
made and used
so he could
switch from reel to reel
ink from the end of one reel to the next
when projecting feaure films
for the Film Club of an evening
after Ricker left
a visiting
Bell and Howel technician removed it
anyway
last summer Ricker confused hs sister by telling her
he'd bought a machine for drillingsquare holes
here s is folkes
Ricker's first
mortice and tennon joint

25th April 2021

just imagine
Tweedledee
shacked up with the
Red Queen
who's daddy runs a national newspaper....

first we will go back a couple of years
do you remember
PPI
payment protection insurance
there was a government web site
on that site there were links to
agencies who would process your claim for you
did you know that
those agencies charged
25 per cent - a quarter of your claim value
for handling it for you
and tey charged 20 per cent VAT on that fee
so
one thousand pounds coughed up by your credit card company
Ł250 to the agent, Ł50 to the government
Ł700 to you
if that sounds bad consider
parliamentary cabdidate Killick
Hartlepool by election
took a phot of a woman when she was asleep??
how asleep?
how deeply asleep?
she gets awarded
Ł5000 because her
life has been destroyed
her lawyers get
Ł2,500 of that as a fee
and charge her
Ł500 VAT
if the rules were followed
we will be interested to see
how many votes Mr Killick gets
we think he deserves more that
Hangus the Monkey
just lke furleau
compensating wimin for being female
is a
feed a lawyer scam

under the heading
life's too short
our Ricker has got a bee under his bonnet about
people complaing about photography
and
the media using the
face blur tool
simply because they have got it
in order for a photographer to need a
model release form to use a photograph
the photographer has to have requested
creative input from the model
photographers do not need permission to
include people in the background of their shots
here's a dimension of
this
we referred to
back street garages
and an aspect of this came to mind
a person - little old lady
booking her car into a vehicle repair shop
have you got a dash cam?
is it switched off
it brings to mind the cops who recently got in trouble
for having a jaunt in a confiscated Bently
because its tracker showed it had
gone the long way round
from pull ove point to police pound
last week our Ricker
not for the first time
got onto
Google Street View
life's too short to check it out but apparently
if a stree is marked in blue on
Google maps
it can be seen in Google Street View
there is something gloriously
Keystone Cops slapstick comedy about
a security guard scurrying out of his cabin
to confront a passer by with a camera
when every vehicle passing
and every vehicle entering and leaving
has a dash cam
and probably a back up - reversing aid - camera
we all got cameras now
get used to it

24th April 2021

a long long time ago
there was a company called
ICI
Imperial Chemical Industries
for much of its life it was
the largest manufacturer in Britain
as such
its main operational sites were
Billingham in Stockton-on-Tees
Wilton in redcar and Cleveland
in Billingham there was a football team or club
It's called
Billingham Synthonia
not Billingham Symphonia
it's called Synthonia because it is
was
the works team of
ICI's synthetic ammonia plant
we won't carry on about
The Diamond Boring Company
or
The United Alkali Company
both of which our Ricker's grandad worked for
they started with salt
rock salt extracted by solution not mining
and then there were other minerals
and synthetic ammonia was made during the
Second World War
as a constituent of explosives
and so we can say
quite important
Now if you get a chance you may drive along the
A174
from Eston to Redcar
Wilton Castle golf club
you may glimps the large red brick office block
once referred to as
The Wilton Hilton
The Wilton R&D site - research and development
was built to support the plastics division with
R&D and chemical engineering facilities
In the 1960s
ICI Billingham was split into
HOC and Agriculture
Heavy Organic Chemicals
got this explosives factory
little or no market post war
use it to make fertilizer
very swords into plough shares
nor a lorra people know this but
from 1971 to 1988...
ICI Billingham hosted
General Atomics TRIGA
wot!
Mark 1
a
nuclear reactor
used to produce
radio isotopes
and then there was
what eventually became
Quorn
initially a bioreacter to produce
animal feed
now use to feed vegitarians
over in enemy teretory
In Manchester and Huddersfield
well huddersfield isn't quite the enemy
ICI specialised in dyestuffs
Deep into enemy teretory
in Runcorn in Cheshire
ICI made chlorine - not poison gas surely
and caustic soda - sodium hydroxide
and CFCs - remember them?
to put ICI history in a nutshell
ICI started on Teesside but
slunk off to Cheshire to die

but its activities have always been
or, always were, of national strategic importance
not just because they were big

in 1993 ICI split off its
drug, pesticide and speciality chemical division as
Zeneca Group plc
in 1999 that merged with
Astra AB
of Sweeden to become
AstraZenica
the rest of ICI was bought for
Ł8billion in 2007 by Akzo Nobel
Perspex - plexiglas
polythene and nylon were
were developed in Billingham in 1940
The anhydrite mine in Billingham closed in 1971
and so we guess that's where they want to
'store' the carbon dioxide
anhydrite is an evaporative mineral
rocks left behind when salty water evapourates
ICI made a lorra lora
palster board
dry wall
specifically anhydrite is
calcium sulphate
even more precisely
anhydrite - CaSO4
gypsum - CaSO4-2H2O
anhydrite is
waterless gypsum

Thames House
is an office building on
Millbank
on the North bank of the River Thames
adjacent to
Lambeth Bridge
Officially...
Thames House was the headquarters of ICI
until 1994
and only became
officially the headquarters of
MI5
from that date

we don't know exactly what went wrong with the
Post Office Counters
computer system
but we have a similar story from charity
Sue Ryder Care
Sue Ryder care had a charity shop on
Redcar High Street
and it was a pop-up
it was a place holder
it paid no rent on the basis that if
anybody offered rent
it would close and make way
so Arthritis Research offered rent and it closed
then ARC moved out etc etc
and so the staff
had to be offered alternative work
the charity offered our Ricker a job they thought
he was bound to refuse
part time in Thirsk even though the staff at Saltburn were retiring
and up for replacement
Rcker took the job
temporary full time whilst the other
job share manager worked out her notice
as retail manager for all the shops of a charity based in
Hartlepool
she was makng the move because
her mother had moved to a static caravan in Thirsk
and the manager wanted to move to another nearby
we suppose that this co-incided with her husband's retirement?
or perhaps he was a contract welder who
didn't mind where 'home' was
there was a problem
we don't tour all the charity shops to check but
at that time
income at charity shops came from several streams
they were and probably are
run as arms length commercial companies
we associate charity shops with being
given things with a view to them being sold
to fund the charity
charity shops are largely run by volunteers
the Thirsk shop had
two paid managers on a job share
and one volunteer
it is very small
what happened at that time was that
charity shops such as
we know, Sue Ryder Care and Cancer Research UK
for certain
as trading companies
were getting stock from at least four sources
donations of goods at the shop
street collections
donations of overstock - new goods
purchase of new goods - some with logos, some not
to cut a long story short
and bring up the parallel with Post Office Counters
all sales had to be rung up on the tills
within their appropriate category
in essence
whether at a few or many branches
if
all sales were rung up under the same code
using the same till button
BIG
Bought in Goods
would show a massive deficite
the charity would be buying goods for sale and selling them at a profit
BUT
the accounts would say
they were
shrinkage
stolen not to be found at stock take
not to be found on till rolls
that was the first problem
in a small shop it woud amount to a few hundred pounds a year
no big deal
the second problem was
Rosanna, the area manager was not
accountancy trained
she did not understand that she had to do something about this
she did nothing
as a consequence
doing nothing meant not
writing off the losses on each year's accounts
so year 1 with no proper manager - Ł120 misallocated in the accounts
year 2 - Ł120 not written off, carried over plus Ł150 for yeaar 2
after five years
we were over a thousand pounds of shrinkage
being accounted IN YEAR FIVE
sliget problem
in year 5 the shop had deliveries of BIG
valued at less than Ł1,000
how can you have sharinkage that exceeds
value of stock purchased?
so we have the same old problems
over promoting people without proper training
and
'sacred' categories of employee who
cannot be trained or questioned
you can't tell a black man or a woman that they are wrong
for fear of
is it 'cos I's black?
so you gradually loose your best people because
your best people - white men included
are the only people you are entitled to blame
if anything goes wrong
wheels within wheels
although X was a job share manager in a tiny shop
she HAD BEEN retail director for an entire charity in Hartlepool
she 'outranked' Rosanna who was 'merely' an
area manager for a
nationawide Charity
and was of course the younger woman
this has consequences for our Ricker
when his GP service was located in coatham Road
there was a practice nurse - one of several
and as it goes
Rosanna is either the sister or cousin
of that nurse
and so
Ricker's GPs know him from a different angle
and are not so keen on seeing him
so Ricker got sacked
Rosanna left the company
and X struggled on for another year or so
there is a fambulous side not to this
the shop is a regualr cave
stale air means to stinks
X blamed Ricker's personal hygiene
and Rosanna made a special
petty cash allocation for
deoderant for Ricker
another problem that
wasn't solved by
getting rid of the man

23rd April 2021

there will be an election for a
Tees Valley Mayor on 6 May 2021
There are
675,900 people
331,800 males
334,200 females,BR> that doesn't quite add up
anyway
that is around a quarter of the
Population of
North East England
2,669,900people
1,312,100 male
1,357,800 frmale
as at 2019
these are Offuce for national Statistics figures
18,900 of those are unemployed
9,800 males
and
9,100 females
and so to Mayoral candidates
The labour candidate pledges to create
56,000 new jobs in the Tees Valley
20,000 in the Net Zero Green Port
10,000 in tech hubs in Stockton Darlington and Middlesbrough
and 26,000 culture and tourism jobs
from the ONS...
18.8 per cent of children in the Tees Valley
live in workless households
which is twice the Great Britain average
what does this mean?
clearly it means that
children in the North East of England
tend to live with
stay at home mothers
who
go out
when they fancy a bit of the other
or with the children's retired grandparents
74,100 people declare themselves
out of work and
Does not want a job
single mums, the retired
28,300 people declare themselves as
out of work, wants a job
there are therefore
28,300
job seekers in the Tees valley
and so...
Jessie Joe Jacobs...
if your plans go ahead,br. we need homes and hospitals and schools for
30,000 imigrants
even if all the jobs you create
suit our job seekers
the Tory offer of 20,000 new jobs seems to
come from a better grasp of these stats
for those who don't follow these things
Middlesbrough has an elected mayor
The Tees Valley has an elected mayor
Middlesbrough has one because
the post wasn' rolled into the Valley post that came later
in other words
in no way was the role of
elected Middlesbrough Mayor
expanded to become Tees valley Elected Mayor
we recall an ex=cop called Mallon being the first
elected mayor of Middlesbrough
and beginning his term with plans for Redcar - Eston
no way Hose

22nd April 2021

it's time for another think piece
this is where we write something that isn't a direct
rebuttal of some bullshit
published in the media

for well over half a century
we have live with a refined version of
History especially a history involving warefare
is written by the winners
the refinement is that in this case we havean
authorised version
of mid 20th century history
written by Winston Churchill
as we write modern day
more industious historians
and looking to other sources
it is both difficult and interesting
challenging
to think outside the box in this way
no immediate conclusions are available
the two questions at top of mind are
why did Adolf Hitler come to power?
why did Germany start so many wars?
lots of people died in the Second World War
we have just had a bit of an insght into the fact that
lots of them were non-white subjects of the Brtish Empire
we will not here
The British are NOT citizens of the United Kingdom
they are Her Majesty's Loyal Subjects
that aside
and applying no less to those born and living in England
Scotland or wales but also white
so The British are no individually independent
they are all subject to the same laws
even when
The Crown versus Bloggs
is replaced by
The People versus Bloggs
even though significant numbers of non-white subjects of
The British Crown died in conflict in the 20th century
the numbers are
how should we say
not a large proportion of the overall death toll
to work backwards...
why did Germany start so many wars
wars with so many countries during the Second World War?
when we consider the Second World War we
soon turn to
concentration camps
the extemination of The Jews
but not just the Jews
people died in the UK in the Second World War
but if you step back
think away from the
justified outrage at that
and consider
how much of the German War Effort
was actually expended against the British Isles?
were the Germans actually doing any more than
sabre rattling
in the direction of the UK?
if they thought the British were akin to The Germans
they may have thought
we can keep the British out of our hair
whilst we go bout our business
at minimal effort
and what was that business?
it seems to take two dimensions
one is to
punish their own people for
humiliating the German elite by allowing the German defeat
in the First World War
and the second was todo something that had been done before
somebody - may research who at a later date
but let us guess it was Attlia the Hun
he ruled in Europe from 434 to 453
and was a scourge of the two
yes there were two at the time - East and West
Roman Empires
basically, he depopulated Europe
he killed so many people that he had the effect of a
massive pandemic
and he
there is this tale from the UK parliamnet
at some stage - possibly post First World War
let's just imagine here
concepts not facts
after the Second World War people in the UK got
The Welfare State
let's just imagine that after the First World War
as a peace settlement
The UK government promised everybody who wanted it
a piece of land of their own and a pre-fab home on it
and one parliamentarian said
in a cartoon probably
as oppsoed to actually in The House
where are these land grants?
and the government leader said
come over here and I'll kick you in the balls and
that will be your two acres
in other words in the
Hungry Thirties
governments thought that if there were less people
they could be spread out and become
self sufficient
grow there own food
not rely on government handouts
and with the loss of life in the
fighting of the First World War
plus the loss of life in the following
'flu epidenic
it seemed feasible
particularly to The German Governments
have a war, kill a lot of people
and the survivers will be well off
and perhaps
medical science
along with other developments
thwarted this plan
there was no
global epidemic during or after the
Second World War
even thought the same old infections existed
even though the UK NHS did not come in
until several years after the Second World War ended
and one of the questions
perhaps the title of a play
in post WW2 UK was
What if we gave a war
and nobody came?
thin the buggers out a bit
by having a war
lost credibility in Europe
but still holds sway
in Africa and The Middle East
Sam, Sam pick up they musket
the sergeant exclaimed with a roar
Stanley Holloway
this idea in popular culture that
after WW2 you would not have
militant feninists - suffragists and suffragettes
sending white feathers to men who did not enlist
that developed nations demanded more advanced solutions to
problems of genuine poverty
and religious leaders reluctantly
removing their support from those who
had the
wrong end of the stick
and thought a nation needed
legions of the dispensible
in order to be able to fight wars
rather than having wars to thin the population out a bit
for anybody wanting to run a course on this
a core set text would be
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

21st April 2021

here's somebody we're pretty sure
you've never heard of
The Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe
a Unitarian minister in the
Acton and Ealing area of Greater London
he was politically active in the 1930s
and a member of the
Nordic League
that was acive for 1935 to 1939 in
private efforts to co-ordinate
elements seeking to establish
Nazism in the UK
He declared
that he hated Jews
'in the sense that he hated all corruption'
it is normal for teenagers to rebel against
their parents
and later revert
Rev. Sharpe's son did the opposite
he went along with his father's views at first
and then changed his mind
It's quite likely that if you ever knew about his son
by now you will have forgotten him
The son was
Tom Sharpe
and Tom Sharpe went to
Penbroke College, Cambridge
not the Oxford we have discussed recentlyBR> Tom Sharpe wrote
Porterhouse Blue
most people still remember the still alive
David Jason
who played
Scullion in Porterhouse Blue in 1987
and Ian Richardson who played
Sir Godber Evans
of courese David Jason was also
Del Boy Trotter in
only Fools and Horses
but most importantly of all
he voiced
Danger Mouse
anyway
we refer readers to
Porterhouse Blue
as a reference to the mileau
from which emerged
the UK's current Prime Minister
The Bullingdon Club
The Bullingdon Club is a private all male
dining club for Oxford University students
David Cameron
George Osborne
Jeremy Hunt
Boris Johnson
'recent'members
Only Fools and Horses
if you can't be bothered to check
a Porterhouse Blue is
a stroke
brought on by excessive eating at a club
such as The Bullingdon

20th April 2021

it's sometimes surprising what is difficult to find
on the internet
today our Ricker came across a situation where
one ordinary little car had run into the back of
another ordinary little car
there was a fair bit of damage to the car that
had been hit
we are completely out of the loop here
back in the day
when you saw two cars that had had a crash
and there was nobody still in the cars and nobody laid on the ground
you would have called that a
no injury collision
no need to call the police
knock for knock
each insurance company would repair their own vehicle
without debate
Ricker remembers having a prang or two
no injuries but
police involved
what was interesting was what Ricker remembered
a fat old copper getting far too close
no social distancing then
what's this gay guy up to?
no sorry
hes not after a feel
he's got close so he can
guess
whether he can smell alcohol on Ricker's breath
and then
road traffic investigtion
we will state here that what happened was
we wll make a stab at this
old road layouts
we think Ricker was just south of Towcester
on the A43
and we think that at that time
there was a left hand bend in a wood
and at the apex of the bend there was a turn off
for the A413 back to Buckingham
so we are in a wood on a two digit A road
that is wide enough for one lane of traffic in each direction
and we further guess that there were double white lines
prohibiting overtaking
thus
anybody wanting to make the right turn
had to back up the traffic behind them
no central reserve or filter lane
so Ricker stops at the back of a short queue
then
a lead foundry wagon whacks into the back of him
and then an aritculated, refrigerated food wagon
whacks into the back of him
and all the traffic in front of Ricker
goes its merry way leaving at the front of
three wrecked vehicles
and so far a Ricker was concerned
accident investigation consisted of
measuring the length of his skid marks
around a foot
to determine whether he had been speeding
so back in the day
A road in open country
12 to 14 inch skid marks, and came to a rest
at the end of the skid marks - not speeding
no further action
despite nobody stopping to offer a witness statement about
how Ricker had avoided hitting the car in front
what struck Ricker this morning was
if the car had been very expensive
or the incident had been more recent
would his car have had
ABS brakes?
brakes that don't lock up
it seems that brakes still do lock up
but do the police have access to
Black Box data
from the engine, etc management system
information on this does not seem easy to come by
you whacked that car
did you even touch the brakes?
Tiger Woods apparently didn't but he was driving something
very high end
we understand that some cars can even
send a text
I have crashed at grid reference...
even if the humans inside are unconscious
it's a very unequal world out there
as for today's little incident
we can only conclude
some test on the road surface to see
how much grip there was
was the reason for the road closure??
we liked the civilian saying to a truck driver
you'll have to spin around the police are
gonna close the road
and the driver proveeds to the copper with the words
this thing ain't never gonna spin around
or words to that effect
the rear driver had
pilled into a queue of traffic stopped at traffic lights
and the queue was facing away from the recently risen sun

our Ricker is the first to admit that he may well suffer from
agoraphobia
the thing is
although the government probably encourage employers to
employ 'security'
to get the illiterate off the unemployment register
we do think the one greatest advantage of
online shopping is that
there are no securty guards
at online shops
in theory
security should make us feel safer but
Ricker for one
feels if a place is so unsafe that it needs
security guards
it is a proper trigger for
agoraphobia
and we return to this on-going obsession with
overt rather than covert photography
if you were in a shop and a fellow customer
began an impromptu photo shoot
you may see that in a different light from
the fact that amongst other things
self service tills - like lap tops
have cameras in them
you feel self conscious about seeing the camera
even though it is just one of many that are following your every move
but if the fellow customer - as opposed to a staff member
was wearing a hidden camera
you may calss that as voyerism
what is quite interesting is that all of this is a throw back to
people - minor royals in particular
complaining about
paparatsi
a papartso is a person who gets paid for taking the picture
when the person in the picture thinks that it is they who
should get paid
top ranking royals
expect to be photographed and not to be paid for it
but lower rank royals and other celebs
don't get paid for just existing
they need a source of income
and it comes from adverts that accompany the pictures of themselves
that they publish themselves
we thought it was very interesting that somehow
the met. police got hold of camera 'phone material of the
Fishmongers' Hall Murders
and the media gave the met. police the picture credit
and not the people who volunteered their footage to the police
given that the footage was of the even before the crime
and not of the crime

we'll introduce a little social history here
before the First World War
shop assistants were men
and shopping was done by women
and shops had
counters
and shop assistants were called
counter jumpers
because the men of the town did not trust the
shop assistants to keep to their side of the counters
and then as the wa wore on the lack of young men meant that
women got shop work
by the end of the Second World War
women had such a grip on retail that
everyone agreed that
counters were redundant
and the self service supermarket with
roving shelf stockers
was born
and now
do you ever see a female security guard in a supermarket?

as things stand in the UK Premier League
soccer, association football
teams each play
38 league matches per season
for the top six clubs
only in around ten of these do they
stand a chance of loosing
a certain type of fan pays to watch
their players bully lesser teams
we respect the skills and dedication of
all players
but how about
if you end up in the top six in one season
the following season
you must start each match with
10 players instead of 11
that may make the leaque more interesting

19th April 2021

apart from when Tess in the bank
makes him feel two inches tall because
he touched the wrong part of the screen
have you noticed that
at supermarket tills
if you touch the same button on the screen
with two fingers at the same time
the machine does not respond?
anyway
rarely does our Ricker feel
conned
he does right now over
Redcar Steel Works
it seems that a lorra lorra money has been
put through the government's books as
maintainance and security
for a future industrial estate on the
Redcar Steel Works site
it is beginning to look like
what has happened is that that money has been spent
on building a new steel works
in plain sight
we won't stray from the
public domain
but the bulk terminal
once owned by Powel Dufryn
the PD Ports and now
some Canadian outfit
is being offered to somebody in the
Middle East
for around a billion GBP, pounds Sterling
how coud it be worth that if it were not part of
a functioning steel works?
it seems of all the people
the project may be being hidden from
the most likely are
the people of Scunthorpe
and
Port Talbot

by contrast
Sembcorp
who took over management of
Wilton International
from
ICI
recently wrote to local residents saying
inter alia - amongst other things
from April 2021
the 'whole site alarms' will be retired
no more 9am to 10am oof a Tuesday
alarm tests
those alarms were heard by
14,000 households every Tuesday
EVERY TUESDAY including Christmas Day
and New Year's Day
no more
because
Wilton International
is no longer an intigrated
crude oil waste recycling site
on this specal day...
our Ricker has a question for
The South Tees Development Corporation
if you were selling or trying to let
a home
would you put the
For Sale
board in
the
Back Garden
STDC is behaving like
China or Russia
things ain't going too well at home so let's
treat Dormanstown
like
The Crimea
what's the point of spending big bucks on a
promotional map of the site
and then employing security gurad to
stop people looking at it??

this is
in plain site
evidence that the
single track siding
from the Darlinton to Saltburn line
into Wilton International
is having money spent on it
new balast

For a personal reason our Ricker
today
is allowing himself to write something
in a way that may cause confusion
rather than clear it up
he's seen material on TV about
castelated nuts
this is what Ricker understands
important elements - parts
in a machine may
experience very large temperature changes
in daily service
the metal parts expand and contract with
varying temperatures
the idea of castelated nuts is??
mostly, you screw a nut on quite tight
to a preset torque setting
to stop it loosening and running off the shaft
or bolt
IF the nut is squeeing a bearing
there is a conflict between
the nut being tight enough to stay on
and being so tight as to sease the bearing
when the bearing gets hot
so you prioritise the bearing and discount
the nut retaining grip of the assembly
abandoning that you compensate by
drilling a hole through the thread of the
bolt or shaft
you then pass a split pin in the manner of
a stitch
through two opposite gaps in the nut
and the hole in the shaft
Ricker watches car modification TV shows
here's the question
we see footage of the nut being fitted and the pin being
inserted
but on occasion
the pin appears to be going through the
hole drilled through the shaft or bolt
and not catching any of the gaps in the nut
castelated - with alternating high and low points
in sharp not smooth transitions
from high to low arrow slit in a castle - castelated
Ricker has washers that are
a tenth of a milimetre thick
that he has to seat
circular saw blades
what he is suggesting is that
if the hole in the shaft
does not line up with the castellations
the nut should be packed out with
one or more washers

17th April 2021

The Promenade Penguins
are booking in the new materials

this picture seeks to show
how much narrower the cinema building will be than
the bund
plenty of room for
action down the side
an outdoor courtyard

rgthe upper sections are
way thinner than the lower ones

16th April 2021

Arrested Development
things just build up
slowly creep up on us
as individuals and as societies
was
John Lennon
the first person to say
Life is what happens while
you're making other plans

somehow we have developed recruitment systems
for police
that select people with a mental age of
nine years
that has become entrenched because
per se - as it stands
that's not a major problem
the major problem is that somehow along the way
the police have stopped playing
Cops and Robbers
and shifted to playing
Cowboys and Indians

perhaps the main reason is that
Robbers
iincluding
Safe Crackers
the likes of
George Reynolds
have long since
gone legit
or at least switched to
White Collar Crime

it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that
some of these movements sucha as
Cancel Culture
are funded by the likes of
Russia and China
but
police agents may be
allowing
training exercises
to spill out onto the streets
we are quite convinced that
protesters in places such as
Hong Kong
and
Burmah
are often never sure whether they are
at home playing a computer game
or actually on the streets
and that confusion may be drug induced

there are significant difficulties with
how shall we say
intimate human relationships
in all his younger days
our Ricker was brought up according to
the sort of rules you may expect in a court of law
or on The BBC
these are not
Real World Rules
Ricker's 'To Do' list was
get educated
get qualified
get a job
get a partner
get a home
get kids
the real world to do list has long been
get somebody pregnant
we'll find you a home and a job
when Ricker worked for
Dolland and Aitchison opticians
he was befriended by a bloke
Keith went on to become a
consultant in Huddersfield Eye Hospital
a little way into the friendship
Keith said to Ricker
I knew you weren't gay when
I came to your room
and you didn't jump me
man has access to women
doesn't 'jump them'
must be gay
we said the woman Ricker most resented being
separated from was
Rosanna
Rosanna of Knaresborough and Sue Ryder Care
lots of lovely girls have
trailed their coat for Ricker
but
Sam was the only one to visit him at home
and Rosanna was the one Ricker was most convinced
would raise kids the way
his mum had raised Ricker
essentially it comes down to
a woman must have her foot
not her knee on a man's neck
suggestions of rape, indecent assault, stalking
harassing, upsetting
or she must walk away and find another victim

15th April 2021

sometimes we wonder whether there really is a
Deus ex machina
a supervisor tweaking the ways of the world
everybody knows that
Sunderland AFC
are so lucky to be in the
First Division
what we find quite amusing is that
the trade union for the
fuck whit senior civil servants
decided to call itself
The First Division Association
before the renaming in UK professional football gave us
Premiership
Championship
Division one
Division two
national league
was 'somebody up there' putting the hubristic
representatives of the people
back in their place?

George Reynolds
Direct Worktops
our Ricker has a memento in his home
in the kitchen he has a
Direct Worktops worktop
and they were the making of a chap
recently dead
called George Reynolds
and George Reynolds probably hear about the
baseball?
movie with the slogan
Build it and they will come
well George Reynolds
built it
and they didn't come
Darlington
Middlesbrough Football Club is
based in Darlington
Rockliffe Hall training ground
Darlington has a professional football club
well they are not playing at present
they are probably on furleau and delivering pizza
George Reynolds built them a 40,000 seat stadium
and the got 1,500 spectators
the stadium probably gets
pre-CoViD
more spectators for its
rugby matches than it got for its
football matches
if our Ricker were playing
Forge of Empires
he'd move Middlesbrough Football Club's fixtures
from 'The Cellnet'
Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium
to the stadium in Darlinton
that way MFC would get to play
Home matches
and with a roof...
The Cellnet would make an
Amazon warehouse

we love this story about George Reynolds
he had a factory making those worktops
he didn't just import them and flog 'em
in the factory he had machines
and somebody - let's say Kevin
worked one particular machine
Kevin spray painted
Kevin
on the machine
Gorge asked around and
went into the car park and
spray painted George
on Kevin's car

14th April 2021

if you take a vehicle to a
back street garage for
service or repair
you may expect that they may not use
main dealer original manufacturer spares
electing Oxford grads is like
taking your vehicle to a back street garage
and expecting that garage to
sub contract the entire job
to a local main dealer
Oxford reserves
political and civil service recruitment for
their student baffoons
where else would they get a
tick in the
first destination after graduation
box
not all Oxford grads are as
jaw drop dumb
as the ones with double Firsts
nor as way with the fairies as
J R R Tolkien
would you buy a vaccine from
Tweedledee?

we think people have probably not
made their own researches concerning
blood clots without plateletes
hence we will do
haematology 101
there are many places where we could begin
we'll start with
fibrinogen
factorI
is a glycoprotein complex
made in the liver
it circulates in the blood of
all vertebrates
anything with a backbone
animals, birds, reptiles, fish

during vasculer injury
during and shortly after
damage to blood vessels
it is converted enzymatically
by thrombin
thrombin ends in in
like insulin
because it's an emzyme
to fibrin
and then to a fibrinbased blood clot
fibrin clots function primarily to occlude
block up
cover
blood vessels
to stop bleeding
nature's own tornequet
or haemostatic pad

platelets are small colourless cell fragments in the blood
platelets are essential to the formation of these clots
low platelets... you can bleed to death

platelets are an evolutionary development
all vertebrates have fibrinogen
only mammals have platelets
so if the non mammals don't bleed to death
humans with a low platlet count
stand a fighting chance
you may never have seen one of those 'phones
designed for conference calls
they look a bit like a three armed star fish
so imagine a three aremed star fish
lenses not spectacle lenses
magnifying glass lenses
all is well platelet is
magnifying glass lens shaped
a wound is sgnalled
the platelets take on a
three aremed star fish shape
they stop gliding around like
RBCs red blood cells
and become a thicket
and they become sticky
sticking to nearby membranes
and they set off the fibrinogen

this is how it goes
normally
and that glue works with a surgeon's stitches
to overcome gaps that would otherwise be
too big

at its widest
a rouleau is
1 a cylindrical pack of coins
2 a coil or roll of ribbon
forget that second roll of gaffer tape concept
think of a stack of coins

when we examine a blood sample
we may smear a drop of blood across a microscope slide
sometimes when we do
the RBCs react by
stacking up like a tower of coins
The appearance of rouleaux may be artificially caused by
poor preparation of the smear or by
viewing the slide in a thickened area
when rouleaux formation is truly present
it is caused by an increase in
cathodal proteins
such as immunoglobulins and fibrinogen
in the absence of a wound....
you get the first
not fibrinogen
but
the RBC surface gets coated in
antibodies

you immunise a patient because
you want them to
create antibodies
but
and as we have suggested more likely
if the RBCs a re old and knackered
the antibodies you want
may stick to the surfce of knackered RBCs
and cause them to read ths as
fibrinogen activation
and form rouleaux
and clots
without any fibrinogen and that's
agglutination
and here we can go back to the
bulk pack of gaffer tape or duct tape
you buy sticky tape
individually wrapped
if you stack a number of rolls of tape
if the glue is strong
stronger than Sellotape
the glue will ouse from the edges of the tape and
stick the rolls together
the rolls will not stick together in the way of
Olympic rings
if they don't overlap at the edges

12th April 2021

today
to mark a bit of a let down
sorry, less of a lockdown
we are going to run through some of the information
previously ignored
we will start with
we will start with

look!
look what all that hand sanitizing has done for your
chances of getting
the shits
the number of norovirus laboratory reports
week 27 2019 to week 12 2020
it was 5,549
13 per cent higher than the previous 5 seasons
2014/15 to 2018/19
referencing
www.foodsafetynews.com
8 April 2020
Norovirus was behind a foodborn outbreak
in 2018 caused by eating take-out food in China
one of the pieces of advice ignored by the UK government
shall we say not advice but hint
was KFC - Kentucky Fried Chicken
retiring their slogan
finger lickin' good
we will have to battle through the consequences of trade off
between
norovirus and destroying the
packet snack industry - crisps, popcorn etc
the study is in
BMC Public Health
it occured in
Guangzhou, a city in Guangdong Province
BMC is BioMed central limited
a part of Springer Nature
that's Springer and Nature
Springer was German
Nature was British
so these are peer reviewed publications
what they did here is take
rectal swabs
up yer bum not
up yer nose
and they concluded that
people were getting norovirus because
delivers were delivering
take-away home delivery
without
sanitising their hands after
taking a dump
this s where the
wet market theory of CoViD tranmission comes nto play
in the case of norovirus the virus was transferred
from deliverer to food to customer
it was not in or on the food before
the deliverers got their hands on it
so all this stuff about bats and pangolins??
not necessary
poor people move from the provinces and take up
work such as food delivering
and infect the food
it is possible deliverers were sneezing onto the food
but they were more likely sneezing into the doorways
of customer homes
we call it food poisoning but the infection
almost certainly comes from
the people preparing, delivering and serving the food
by their simply breathing in the vicinity of
previously uninfected customers
and room space sharers

and so
the Easter 2021 view of the
The Mighty Redcar
interview wall

and for expats..
the side entrance view
Easter 2021
of the Coatham Hotel Ballroom
gone but not demolished

our Ricker is having
either
a senior moment
or
an ephiphany
18 March 1968
that's the Wikipaedia date
and we have
an insight into Ricker's family history
not to say Ricker has been getting it wrong all these years
just not quite right
something called The Manchester and Liverpool District Banking Company
was acquired by
The National Provincial Bank
and when our Ricker was a little boy
his mam would sometimes find him
sitting n the bottom of a
wardrobe with the door closed
and when she asked him what he was doing he would say
I'm on the train
going to London
to see Peter
Peter was our Ricker's big brother
one of his two big brothers
Peter Robson was a partner in
a London City law firm called
Maxwell Batley
and Peter brokered the deal
the deal that grew The national provincial
we don't think Maxwell Batley still exists
it was at one time a part of some other firm
at any rate
in the Robson family the tradition is that
Peter formed the NatWest bank in 1963
but to the world
he started the process in 1963 and finished in
March 1968
as at present
58.9 per cent of NatWest belongs to
HM Government
when our Ricker was 21
for his birthday
he got a small cheque from brother Peter
maybe not very samll but not life changing
it was a cheque drawn on an accout at
Coutts Bank
in 1987 Blue Arrow - a recruitment company
was at the centre of a financial scandal when
employees of
National Westmnster Bank's
investment arm
County NatWest
covered up a failed issue of
Ł873m of new stock
intended to finance the takeover of
Manpower
Blue Arrow was cleared of any wrongdoing
this was a case that was so complicated that
it brought into question
jury trials for financial fraud
some would say that
The NatWest was OK until it became a part of
The Royal Bank of Scotland
and that the UK government had to buy it in the
2008 crash because of
what RBS had done to it
what we are thinking is that
our Ricker's big bro Peter was
lifelong friends with
David Robarts
not the one on facebook
Robarts was a lot older than Peter
and at Maudlin - spelt Magdalen, Oxford
Peter was at BNC
a lot later
Brasenose College
all of that is an attempt at
full disclosure
before we write the following
we have no link with GreenSill
we are declaring a link with NatWest
NatWest is not a popular bank
there is a structural reason for this
it is not primarily
a retail bank
it is primarily a commercial bank
as such it has little understanding of
salaries and pensions
it regards its customers as
self employed
even when they aren't
so it judges cash flow and not
prospects
when assessing the credit rating of its customers
you can get a bigger overdraft elsewhere

to this extent
Greensill Capital
was a rival of RBS NatWest
beause they both provide provided
factoring services
in the grand scheme of things
if you are BAE systems or somebody
of that ilk
you will get factoring services from HM governemt
they are called
export credit guarantees
for SMEs
real banks such as NatWest
and financiers such as Greensill
will offer factoring services
essentially
you sell goods to a customer without any idea
as to whether they can pay for them
and you sell the invoices to
a factoring service
at a discount
and getting the money out of your customer
becomes the problem of the factorng service
essentially
to a significant extent with NatWest
and to a fatal extent with GreenSill
they money never showed
sp far as we can tell...
cameron is saying to HMG - Richi Sunak
you bailed out NatWest to preserve your
precious jarbs
why can't you bail out GreenSill?
HMG had learned a lesson
they let SSI crash and burn
and Redcar is thriving
whod'a thunk it?

9th April 2021

at this point we want to introduce two important concepts
relating to money
the sort of money even lottery winners
seldom see
and these two concepts are the basis of the majority of
magic money trees
sweat equity
is the unpaid labour employees and cash strapped
entrepreneurs
put into a project
speaking about what is probably US law?
sweat equity shares must be issued with a lock-in period of
three years
what it means
you work for a company
you may get some pay and expenses
but you are in an agreement where
you are accepting low pay
on th understanding that
you are being
GIVEN for free
shares in the company
and that you will not be able to sell these shares
for the lock-in period
but in the end
it will not be the company you were working for
that pays your bonus
it will be the people who
buy from you the shares you were given for free
on the other hand
you may not have been given the best form of sweat equity shares
there are voting shares
there are non-voting shares
but there are also
redeemable shares
redemptions are when a company requires shareholders to sell
a portion of their shares back to
the COMPANY that issued them
it must be clear up front that they are
redeemable or callable
alongside this
and in some cases as a reward bonus
a company can
issue a scrip
a bonus scrip, a capitalized issue
is an offer of free additional shares
to existing shareholders
in this case
a company that is unable to
pay a dividend to shareholders
may
give them free extra shares instead
but this will probably - in the short term at least
reduce the value of all shares in that class in that company
it is being suggested that it is this type of shit that
Greensil has been doing with Cameron
to boost
how shall we say it?
Non-Redcar steelworks
at the expense of
Redcar located industry
and the suggestion is that
ex UK Prime Minister Cameron
would get shares worth around
70 million Great British Pounds
if Greensil through their client
Liberty Steel
became the monopoly steel maker in the UK
and pension funds would be buying those shares
with workers' subs

sometimes we wonder whether
all politicians were
sickly as a child
and missed their entire education
right about now
we are wondering
were the Number 10 team en mass
off the day they did calendars
beginning of week 1
relax some lock down measures
after three to four weeks
guage effect
decision on further relaxations
taken at the end of week four
but changes announced to take effect
at the end of week 5
week 4 to 5 a grace period to allow
service providers to prepare
here's the tricky bit
do you count the next four week period to
start from the end of the 4th week or the end of
the 5th week
it does seem to depend on the nature of the
relaxations
or in other words
you have two things going on
and they have a combined effect
you have relaxations of lockdown
and you have
vaccination rollout plus improving weather
the effect of a relaxation will be
broadly
the same at
end of week 4
and end of week 5
overall
it makes some sense to start the second
four week clock
at the point you decide the first
relaxation passed off safely
because you are not just measuring the effects of
the lockdown relaxations
you are measuring the level of safety
for the population
there does seem to be scope for an arguement of
a week unneccesarily wasted
for a desperate economy

7th April 2021

constant vigilance is wearing our Ricker down
people who are good at networking get
top jobs
and end up on panels on TV
busking
we need to point something out
before it gets legs...
analogy time
motor vehicle collision
when it is not
drunk driving
it can be
drug driving
so accident with normal levels of
blood in the alcohol stream
but it could be drugs
when they say
clots in presence of normal platlett levels
they are not saying
the clots occured because of the low lwvels of platletts
they are saying
clots DESPITE low platlette levels
you need another new word
agglutination
agglutination is the process that occursif an
antigen is mixed with its correspondng antibody
called
isoagglutination
This term is commonly used in
blood grouping
This occurs in biology in two main examples
The clumping of cells such as bacteria
or red blood cells in the presence of
an antibody or
compliment
the agglutinated cells can clog blood vessels
the agglutinated cells also crack and their contents leak out in the body
what we are saying
what WE are saying is that
if you delay making RBCs
the haemoglobin polymerises
clumps and bursts out of the RBC and
attracts antibodies
what the experts say is
if you put a blood donation of the
wrong blood group
into a patient
the blood will be attacked by your antibodies
and agglutinate
in these cases
the agglutination is occuring in what we may call
motorway services
in the blood circulation
in one sense
the breakdowns are swapt off the motorway
into the services car park
but the bin men are pre-occupied with the
infection or the innoculation
and miss the routine collections

when we are dealing with
violent pre-mature deaths of females
we have very few cases to consider
as a rule of thumb
from the point of view of statistics
to be 'valid' a medical trial has to involve
at least 34 patients
we have around 100 pre-mature unexplained female deaths a year
and so some analysis is acceptable
what we don't have is easy access information about these deathS
and so we can list possible causes without
quantifying proportions
we had a case in the east of England
of a man who felt that his use of sex workers had
destroyed his life
he became a serial killer who killed five sex workers
before he was stopped
for the most part the remainder can be divided into two groups
first the domestic
killed by somebody you share a home with
there are three sub divisions here
1 I am a failure and my partner and children will be better off dead
2 I am a man and she deserves to die for disrespecting me so much
3 where am I? is it Tuesday. God that's great shit

the second major group is
out on the pull
picked up by a stranger
happy days
are you shure I'm supposed to take
three of these pills?
what we are saying here is
certainly the two most high profile recent cases
in the UK
is
from external appearances
woman gets picked up for sex
goes willingly
is offered drugs
takes too much, dies
man decides to
dispose of the body
rather than seek help
then the wimin come along and say
don't offer women advice
that's blaming the victim
and the advice is
have sex with strangers but,
don't take drugs from them

we are about to set out some stuff about
carbon dioxide and global warming
we have a vested interest in clarity here
this is the place - Teesside - where
carbon capture and storage is suggested
what we want to say is
in the mid 20th century
chemists worked out ways to produce
plastics from hydrocarbons
and much of Redcar's prosperity depended on this
there was a locally famous PR guy whose name we may remember
who said
words to the effect
the reason why ICI etc. made plastics
non-biodegradable
was because customers
demanded excessively long shelf life
for the plastic and for the goods wrapped in the plastic
a second problem is that customers insist on
being supplied with a range of
different polymers
that are almost impossible to sort
for re-cycling
when if they had not had the
upper hand any customer has over a supplier who
wants to promote something
new fangled
they would have said
this is plastic
all you can have is
polyethylene
adapt YOUR products to cope with
one polymer
we are not giving you
ivory substitute
teak substitute
pine substitute
cotton substitute
etc
we have re-cycling in mind
they only had sales in mind and they were
keen and resourceful
here's the current issue
we can't refer to chemical formulae
because we are not writing for chemists
so have patience
imagine a centipede
long body, lots of legs
a head with teeth, on the body
imagine polythene as
a centipede
the body is a string of carbon atoms
the legs are hydrogen atoms
the poly comes because
to digress
when our Ricker was very young
his mam had a string of cheap plastic beads
a neclace
and you could alter the length
make a neclace or using the same beads
make a number of bracelets
the beads were spheres with
a hole opposite a knobbly bit
they entrance to the hole was
slightly smaller than the kbobbly bit
so a knobbly bit could be
forced into a hole and would not fall out
but would articualte because
beyond the entrance hte hole widened out
and the knobbly bit was on a slightly narrower stalk
so we have to juggle two analogies
the centipede and the string of beads
n the beads each bead had
one hole and one knobbly bit
a carbon atom is a bead with four holes
and a hydrogen atom has one knobbly bit
and so a methane
or natural gas molecule is
one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms
when we try to go on
there is an immediate problem with this analogy
imagine a set of beads that has a further component
imagine the knobbly bits can
either fit into a hole
or they can
hold hands
when you
crack
the tar like residue from oil purification
you can get
ethylene
ethane would be
two carbon atoms
each holding hands with the other
and separately holding hands with
three hydrogen atoms each
we would call that
C2H6
two carbon atoms
holding hands
with two of their hands
and each holding hands with two hydrogen atoms
would be ethene
or in old money
ethylene
C2H4
because
the two carbon atoms are each holding the other
with two of their hands each
so in polythene or
polyethylene
we have a centipede in which
all the carbon atoms that make up the body
are using two hands to hold on to the next carbon atom
one each side
and using two hands to hold on to one hydrogen atom each
except for the
head and tail carbon atoms that are
holding on to three hyrdogen atoms
polythene come sin grades
depending on how long the centipede is
all of this is history
the thing with
carbon capture and storage
is that it leaves off at the point
we have swapped
hydrogen for oxygen in this methane
we have taken out hydrogen and
put in oxygen and got carbon dioxide
and we have
one carbon atom using two hands to
shake the two hand of one oxygen atom
and the other to shake the two hands of
another oxygen atom
hence
CO2
another diversion
you will have heard of
carbon monoxide poisoning
how can
CO exist?
well it tries
it is very unstable
and enflammable
it has three bonds
two pi bonds and one sigma bond
nah, me neither
it is mostly produced by the burning of
fossil carbon in
a situation of
insufficent oxygen
in other words
a natural gas furnace has to be vented
partly to get rid of the
carbon monoxide
and partly to reduce the amount of
carbon monoxide produced by ensuring
the flame has enough oxygen to
produce carbon dioxide and not carbon monoxide
and it's toxic because it
latches permanently not temporarily
to haemoglobin in the blood
rendering the haemoglobin
unable to carry oxygen
returning to carbon capture and storage
the old time chemists figured out how to
make use of
ethylene
today's chemists know that plants can make
all sorts a rock
sugars, starches, cellulose, lignin
from carbon dioxide
but today's chemists
can't be arsed to figure out how to do that
as an industrial process
so they say
pump it down into old mine workings
and hope it don't escape
CCand S

apart from weather girl
Lucy Verimasarmi
our Ricker's current TV fave is
Leanne Ford from a US home makeover show
a strange home life that girl but
very cute
he's lost patience with
Helen Stanley
but Lucy ain't up to
Trai Anfield in her pomp

one of our Ricker's favourite
Hitchhiker's Guide
quotes is
the best laid plans of mice and men
can oft times gan awrye
and that could be
Douglas Adams quoting
Robert Burns
but we don't care
the punch line is with the mice
what have men get to do with it?
and so to the chemistry of planet Earth
if they could speak
the plants may say
what have animals got to do with it?
photosynthesis
plants use enzymes, chemiclas, structures
to
absorb carbon dioxide and convert it into
structural materials
and energy storage chemicals
starch, cellulose, lignin
so consider the starch
mainly it is stored in seeds and tubers
but whatever, it is an energy store
to do its growing and living
the plant needs energy
it has no
wind turbines or photovolteics
it is all about the chemistry
and a growing palnt
converts carbon dioxide from the air into
the likes of starch so long as
the sun shines
but all the time it is converting
the likes of starch into
carbon dioxide and energy
hence
put a plant into a sealed transparent container
with light shining on it
it reduces the carbon dioxide concentration in
the air around it in the jar
in the dark
it increases the oxygen concentration in that air
in the jar
plants absorb carbon dioxide and oxygen at
different light intensities
in the dark
it increases the oxygen concentration in that air
in the jar
plants absorb carbon dioxide at high light intensities
but at low light intensities
all we see is the producton of oxygen
when a plant takes carbon dioxide
and condenses the carbon into complex carbon compounds
oxygen is a waste product
but when a plant 'burns' a startch to create energy
as whn a seed has no leaves but has to have energy to germinate...
it behaves like an animal
animals eat complex carbon compounds and
release carbon dioxide
animals never release oxygen
and so
in terms of a
carbon bank account
when plants, animals, anything that has been alive
dies
in part or in whole
it has carbon in its account
as a part of its structure
and here is the basis of the
oil and gas industry
over a long long time
situations have occurred where
plants and animals have died and
taken their carbon account balances with them
and they have been dumped into conditions
particular conditions, normally with
a lot of water and very little oxygen
where nothing could live next to them and
eat them
and so they remain
a bit like food in a deep freeze
nothing can eat them but over time they
undego
chemical change
and become simplified
rendered into gas and oil
by time and temperature and pressure
in the normal scheme of things
such deposits of dead things
such mega compost heaps
build up a pressure of
methane - natural gas
and under pressure it can escape
from the rocks that have built up
over the top of it
and then you get methane in the atmosphere
and that is CH4
carbon and hydrogen
and in the sunlight
it transforms into
CO2 carbon and oxygen
and both
methane and carbon dioxide
blanket the Earth
causing natural global warming
plants can recycle
carbon dioxide but not methane
so they ahve to wait for the sun to
convert the methane into carbon dioxide
so the oil and gas industry
speeds up the process in two ways
it releases trapped oil and gas far faster than
the likes of earthquakes and pressure build up would
and it converts the indigestible carbon compounds to
carbon dioxide
fatere than sunlight could
and thus it overwhealms the plants capacity to
convert CO2 into solid compounds of carbon
and the levels of carbon dioxide rise
and the blanketing effect increases
and we get
global warming
and carbon dioxide is a much better insulator than
methane
or oxygen
or nitrogen

1st April 2021

some time ago our Ricker had a meeting with
the people who wanted to devlop the
Dogger Bank wind farm
there was some banter about
them never having persuaded one of the bosses to
make a site visit
one thing that didn't come up was that
if your installation is 20 to 50 miles off shore
you can't
nip out in a rib or a dinghy
to check it over
In Coatham Bay we see
27 wind turbines
and mostly one will be stilland have a boat at the base
what hasn't been made much of to date is
when there are hundreds of these things out there
there will have to be
accommodation rigs
people living out there
just exactly the same as the people who
live out there to tend
gas and oil rigs
no job losses there

Is this an April fool's scam
Pleeeese don't go to
Middlesbrough
looking for a B & Q
there is no B & Q in Middlesbrough
There is a B & Q in Stockton
There is a B & Q on
Cleveland Retail Park
in Greater Eston
in Redcar and Cleveland
and it has a
TS6 post code
long long time ago
I can still remember
there WAs a B & Q in Middlesbrough
on Cannon Park industrual estate
sort of opposite Leaders
sort of behind the
Post Office Sorting Ofice

31st March 2021

nobody here would classify themselves as an
investigative journalist
however
we do continue to have questions about
Redcar's new Cinema on the Sand
first of all we understand that
Pebbles and Bambam
is a front for
Sir Robert McAline
base in a new town in the north of London called
Hemel Hempstead
the third worst town to live in in the country
Billingham in the weeds
two things about McAlpines
on the one hand they built the 2012 Olympic Stadium
AKA the 'Appy 'Ammers
and are building HS2
and secondly
they have made some apology for running, funding
a major construction industry
black listing syndicate
if they can build the Olympic stadium
why are they running around site with a
mobile crane
how many
tower cranes
that could reach the entire site
are rotting away in a compound in
Hertfordshire?
so far all we can see is a bit of
off season trade for
contractors' bed and breakfast
they even got the concrete blocks shipped to
Ipswich instead of the Tees
and ran them up the motorway
Tory MP in Hemel Hempstead
Tory MP for Ipswich
so much for handing on to the
red wall painted blue

there is one point of interest
one section of the
planning permission
for the Cinema on the Sand
permits the construction of a
temporary sea wall
this could be the sheet pilling
separating the site from the Esplanade
but it could also mean that the
concrete bund
around the site
is designed to be
removable
if the complex is in future to be expanded
as in the addition of a
pier
or
marina

29th March 2021

so far the seaward wall lower level complete
lots of progress
lots of steel and concrete

this is a tree stump in the
Coatham Drowned Forest

the straggle of rocks?
that's a quize question
the straggle of rocks that are not local
not shale, not boulder clay?
they are the balast from a
shipwreck
and the other stump is
not a tree stump from the forest
but the prow of a wreck
we are very impressed
today there was a worldwide
switchoff of illumination of public buildings
sell it as a strike against energy use
promote it as
this is what will happen if we stop
digging up the fossils
genius
just what the BBC is paid for

we are trying to remember
Ricker is trying to remember who wrote
my boy Jack
could have been Rudyard Kipling but we'll check
first though a stat
as at 2017
the rate of death in childbirth was
211 maternal deaths - deaths of mothers whilst giving birth
per 100,000 live births
that - in 2015 - in The United States was
14 deaths per 100,000 live births
in the UK - no date - the rate is
one maternal death per 10,000 pregnancies
10 per 100,000
we suppose that pregnant women and
those contemplating starting a family
fall into three groups
1 concerned about risk and pain
2 wishing everthing to be
as natural as possible
3 wanting this important event to be
as private as possible
there is a parallel here with people's
women's views about conception and sex
how far is advanced society away from a
sort of version of Ring or Alexa
that women have watch over them
every time they have sex
to make sure that they and their partner are
doing it right?
sex as well as childbirth in above category 1
is it possible that advice to men will become
don't go near a woman unless you are certain that
the cameras are rolling?
the point being at the very least to have some objective sense of
to what extent would the average person believe that
this man had consent
for Western citizens of today
it is difficult to watch documentaries about - say -
the D day landings and hear that strategists
planned for certain groups to
distract the enemy by
embarking on suicide missions
it's probably a Monty Python era shetch
War office has decided that right now we need
a pointless gesture of self sacrifice
get up in a crate
fly over enemy lines
don't come back
I could come back
no, don't come back
whole waves of allies were deployed in that way
on D day
the battle of Waterloo was won
on the playing fields of Eton

we can't give an attribution
when you're the father of boys
you worry
when you'r the father of girls
you prey
the stats don't bear that out
there are risks to being young and female
the risks involved in being
young and male are
four to ten times greater
there has been a recent trend
that has been deeply criticised
when somebody dies
we are beginning to accept that it is the
connections who survive who are the
proper object of concern
courts have been very reluctant to entertain
the concept of
death during consensual rough sex
we, WE, would say
any form of sex that is
less rough than
childbirth
is concievably
consensual
in a sense
activity that is in no way similar to childbirth
isn't sex
isn't something the female body is
designed for
and that would include
stabbing and strangulation

on the other hand
we have to consider something else
something a good deal more troubling
whatever actually happened in the movie
begin with the concept of the movie
Indecent Proposal
have sex with me
purely for the money
consider two people
on the one hand
Mr Pierpoint
we believe the last UK
executioner
consider two other people
three
1 a person who is so mentally ill
they crave death
2 a person who s absolutely certified to
die whatever within a month
3 somebody willing to
pay good money to kill somebody
with impunity

almost everybody would say
we must do all we can to protect the
nutter from themselves
but should we let an honest death
go to waste?
we sometimes hear of the concept of
death by cop
in places where all police are armed
people do set out to provoke police into
shooting them
what about
death by rapist
the idea of going out in a
blaze of glory
the most famous rape victim of the year
when a man pulls a sex partner
how much care does he need to take
that she is not out to
provoke him into killing her?
these cases are very rare
but if the man - the defendent - has some hope that
his side of the story will get a fair hearing
is he more likely to - shall we say - ensure that his
partner's remains are treated with due respect
the matter is promptly reported
and her body is not
found in the woods in a massive sand bag
for the sake of the people who knew the deceased
in life
if the damage stopped at the point of death
that Captain Tomm or whoever
who walked a bit and lived to nearly 100
and raised millions for the government
he did a sort of
out in a blaze of glory by taking
a holiday on a tropical island
without getting a vaccine first
nobody is guilty of manslaughter for
failing to stop him

and so we come to
chief constable as...
holiday camp entertainment manager
this is where
get thee to a nunnery
meets
tail wagging the dog
the recent uprising has been of
guest students
complaining about
laddish behaviour
and
slut shaming
why should a foreign oligarch
expect to send a daughter or niece
who is at a loose end
to a British Public School
and expect it to be being run like a
19th century nunnery?
woman beware woman
not foreign girl at risk of
being snogged or upskirted by
lusty British rugger player
eye candy in pupae
at risk of
daddy's secret police
reporting that she's found out what lives between her legs

26th March 2021

we are very sorry to have seen the goodbyes for
The Dutchess of Middleton One Row
she is a North East legend
local news presenter
and sadly now not at all in the best of health
we wish Pam well

long long long ago
our Ricker's head of department
took him aside and said
your personal tutor,
he has diagnosed mental health problems
the implication being
the student wa supposed to
make allowances for the fact that
the bloke with the power to make or break his career
was an out and out nutter
and
a bloke who had a German mother
and wrongly thought Ricker had a Jewish mother
and oh what the hell
democracy
definition 35a
the lunatics have taken charge of the asylum
why would anybody train to be a
consultant psychiatrist
if on a daily basis
they would be second guessed by
a bunch of
down with the people
ex car park attendants
who had had police uniforms
chucked at them
perhaps Ricker got off easy
he lost his career
the head of department
died in post
of a heart attack

we had a quick look for drop out rate fro vet students
vet students stay the course
recently qualified vets - we are not so sure
it is said that a lot of
female teenagers choose vet school because
the patients can't talk back
the problem is
their owners can
and these days
being a medic is more and more like being a vet
you don't have trouble with the patient you have trouble with the old biddy who
put her hnd up when half cut
in the local Labour club
and found herself
chair of the adult social services committee
half cut - drunk

25th March 2021

today we intend mking an example of
The Princess Royal
the UK Princess Ann
of her many characteristics we will concentrate on
one particular atribute
she has had a lot to do with
horses
and she has had a lot of
financial security
we are not sure how much
police protection
she has had down the years but she
had a run in with a potential kidnapper
or assassin
we probably won't research that today
there were no horses involved
she has one particular characteristic, habit
that she shares with a lot, a great many women
who have never had
police protection
ever since the invention of the
motor vehicle
people have not ridden their horses
from one sporting, equestrian, even to another
The Princess Royal
is the figure head of the legion of women who
need an HGV or LGV driving licence
in order to be able to legally drive their
privately owned
horse box
these are well connected women
and they have overcome the prejudice that says
we will repeatedly fail you in your driving test
because
you are not the sort of person
we want to see driving trucks
good for them and one day we may even see
women driving cars in Saudi Arabia
the trouble is
careers advisors
a long long time ago
probably to do with some enquiry relating to
college course entry
our Ricker got a letter on letter headed note paper
from some sort of college principal
that had under his name
so many letters denoting qualifications
that they took up two lines
of text across the letter
mostly about engineering
we have talked - written - about
Vera Baird
being a middle aged barrister who was not
a QC
she got onto the women only shortlist
for MP for Redcar
and was elected
immediately she was appointed QC
Queen's Councel
nothing to do with anything she had done in court
two reasons
as an Mp in a safe Labour seat
she would never again need to tout for business
as a barrister
secondly
it opened up roles such as
Solicitor General
so we contrast on the one hand the college principal
and Vera Baird
given 'honourary' qualifications on the grounds
they would never need them
so it was safe to let them out
and on the other hand
people who need a qualification
topursue their daily activities
but despite competence
being denied the qualification because
cn't you afford to
employ some donkey jacketed
or poice uniformed
thug
to drive for you
and get him off the unemployment register?
we will deviate here
once upon a time
motors were expensive
in the hands of responsible people
Toad of Toad Hall excepted
and they were required
after the abolition of the
man walking in front with a red flag
to have
an audible means of approach
a horn
but buses wee driven by
working class oiks
and they were not the sort of people
permitted to be so bombastic as to sound a horn
so early busses did not have to things
ahorn
insurance
council vehicles didn't have insurance because
the councils had more money than the insurance companies
and insurance only covered thecost of vehicle repairs
not billions in whiplash claims
a bus smacked yer car
the bus garage would fix it

this latest epidemic has shown us
when we are forced to
break down the clearly defined
areas of doubt and uncertainty
so beloved of unions
we find out just how much
utter traditionalist bollocks
has lurked within the
entirely separated
sub-professions in medicine
two things have happened since the NHS began
medicine has become bigger and more challenging
and
more staff has become dumber staff and more
computer says no
there is a challenge here
how can you have an integrated computerised
patient management system
when different departments and sub-professions
have deeply contradictary traditions?
for an example
an eye department may well have
optometrists and ophthalmologists and eye surgeons
if a person qualifies as an optometrist
they will have a knowledge of optics
not required of an ophthalmologist
and in a sense
if re-trained as an ophthalmologist, to get on and be
accepted as an ophthalmologist
they need to pretend
they never knew that stuff
that stuff about lenses and such
then there is the person who
qualified as an optometrist becomes
a hospital optometrist
they don't have a medical background
and they are supposed to
forget their optical background
and they end up
signing off on the patient's test results
test that had been done by
a nursing auxiliary
so when the patient's case
falls outside the remit of the
test equipment's
Artificial Intelligence
the patient gets the wrong treatment
and in this case
ths epidenic
we have environmental health officials
out ranking
medical scientists
that's medical scientists,
not medical laboratory scientists
the latter being technicians

24th March 2021

our Ricker is struggling for clarity today
all the time seeking analogies and
cultural references
there is or was a game show in the US
popular in Canada
where amateur performances which were deemed
rubbish
were cut short by the sounding of a gong
hence the term
Gong Show
most of these performances were
under rehearsed and chaotic
hence the term - particularly in Canada
referring to anything chaotic as
a right gong show
so much is clear
also clear is the Uk radio show
Just a Minute
a lot of very talented
improv comics
improvisational comedians
challenged to speak about a topic for one minute
without
hesitation, repetition or deviation
what Ricker is struggling with is a show slot that was
an amalgam of these two
the answer is
Hughie Green's Double your money
not quite
there was a show where
the host would ask a series of questions and
the contestant would be
gonged out if they answered
yes or no
and there are classic clips where
little old ladies are asked
are you Janice Webster
and they answer
yes
and get gonged out
at the first question
essentially
political interviews have become modelled on
this form of gong show
somebody has a USP
a unique selling point
like
walking up and down the garden at the age of 99
whilst being a war veteran
they shoot to fame
and they are destroyed as soon as
somebody discovers they are not a
latter day Jess Yates
Paula Yates was the
Jooles Holland partner presenter in
the orginal Later
a music show produced in
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
and called
The Tube
Paula Yates was raised as
Jess Yates daughter
but she was actually
Hughie Green's daughter
and so no proof there that
Jess Yates - a TV music presenter himself
had ever done the naughty
so the current gong show is
Light of the World
until
it is proved that you had ever made reference to sex
on Teesside we have an
arrogant twat of a doctor who
has been a local MPand is standing again
he can't be criticised for being
an arrogant twat
be he has been criticised for referring to somebody as a
MILF
Ricker's mate Kevin is married to a MILF
the concept of MILF relates to not
demanding a virgin bride
Kevin married a divorcee with a grown up
son and daughter
to Kevin she was and is a MILF
a Mom I'd Like to Fuck
arrogant twat - good
straight white guy - bad

and here's the distinction
most politicians are contestants in
a gong show
Donald Trump is or was
the host in a gong show
a somewhat longer career
and senior journalists recognised
a fellow member of the
arrogant twat club
and played along

23rd March 2021

there are words that have a variety of definitions
and mountain is one such
a mountain is a steep high hill
we rarely say
we have a hill to climb
we say we have a mountain to climb
mountaineers
as opposed to rock climbers
probably think of a mountain as being
over 10,000 feet high
Everest is the highest mountain on earth and is
29,032 feet or 8,848.86 metres high
however
in the normal run of things
a hill is a mountain if it has steep sides and is
300 metres high
and here is the first difference
that height for Everest is
height above sea level
that 300 metres for a mountain is
height above the surrounding land
the top of Roseberry Topping is
320 metres above sea level
but the road in the valley below is
100 metres above sea level
so if you climb the topping
you climb 230 metres
not 300 metres
so you can take your choice
by at least two definitions
Roseberry Topping is not a mountain
by one definition it is
if you are flying over it...
you had better know that it is 320 metres above sea level
somebody will know
which mountain climbs highest straight up from sea level
in a way that would be the tallest if not the highest mountain
and so...
Roseberry Topping is
prominent and accessible
however, there are
fifteen
points of land in the area
that are higher above sea level than Roseberry Topping
they are on
Urra Moor
the highest of the
North York Moors
it is 454 metres above sea level
it is on the
Lyke Wake Walk
and
The Cleveland Way
and is the fourteenth most prominent hill in England
the actual Trig Point summit of Urra Moor
is called
Round Hill
and is as boring as its name
it does not have the cliff face that
the topping has

Benjamin Franklin
we must, indeed, all hang together or,
most assuredly, we shall
all hang separately
this was said at or about the signing of
The American Declaration of Independence
in a way
new UK police legislation is designed to
prevent people from hanging together
the modern day option is
a peaceful demonstration on the streets
or
an on-line petition
it is a reality that if your defintion of
democracy
is
anybody can be king
you get people of limited skill sets in
positions of power
some people thought that four and a half years ago
Donald Trump
who likes winning would have said
at his inauguration
I won
I'm done
but he pressed on to take up the post
we have
a security operative as President of Russia
we have
a journalist as Prime Minister of the UK
id your definition of democracy is
anybdy can have the top job
and deploy any powers they choose to keep it
no matter how illequipped they prove to be for the role
we are going beyond populism
we are gon into
a game of chance
can somebody who is popular
prove also to be
skilled?
in a sense it's like
recruiting medical students through a
neat handwriting contest

but this is not the element of hanging together we
want to propose today
we have said that Redcar in the guise of Coatham
has secured a new sand cinema
and a new beach hotel
there is enthusiasm in the town for the idea of
a replacement pier
here's the thing
beyond the discovery that the project is
a snap from a civil engineering point of view
if you build a pier out from
the new cinema out a ways across the Scars you could enclose a
marina
and here is the hanging together bit
Hartlepool has a marina
Hartlepool may say we don't want competition from
an upstart marina in Coatham
BUT
consider people who would consider a boat trip
from Hartlepool to Coatham
and back
quite enough adventure for one day
where do people with boats in Hartlepool marina
sail to?
a lot of people making short trips
would do more for the local economy than
a few folk tripping off to Norway once of twice a year
this is the problem with
Whitby tourism
lovely harbour
great fish and fries
if you pay for a boat trip
they take you through the breakwaters
a couple of hundred metres out to sea
a couple of hundred metres along the shore to be
off the nearst beach
and bring you back again

21st March

there is a company that owns
The King's head
in Newton-under-Roseberry
that;s Roseberry Topping
the hill that isn't a mountain
apprently called the Inn Collection Group
and they are proposing to build a new
Coatham Hotel
next to TunedIn at the
Coatham Enclosure
on Majuba Road
not quite
boutique
44 rooms
so far we have had
The Mungle Jungle
and Coatham Coast Guard store
demolished to make way
the Coast Guard are now located at
The Fire Station on the Trunk Road

this is approximately where the Coast Guard store was

it's a very long tme since there was an exchange of letters between
our Ricker and HRH The Prince of Wales
the reply, not signed by HRH, will be somewhere in
Ricker's rat's nest
from memory it was about hydrogen
and the point was
HRH hydrogen production is very energy intensive
and Ricker just simply saying
regard hydrogen as a battery
the point being
a good battery will
take, store, and discharge on demand
a lorra lorra energy
this is a good thing for a battery to be
energy intensive
and so this 'snag' with wter to hydrogen and oxygen and back
keeps cropping up in discussions about
synthetic fuels
and so another far fetched analogy
say you are marooned on a remote Scottish island
you want to call for help and keep in touch with the world
you need to keep your 'phone charged
lets say there is a generator at the cottage you have found
if you turn the spindle, the axle, of the generator
and you have one or more of those
external, plug in, external batteries for the 'phone
but you have no fuel for the generator
you do have a windmill
when the wind blows you can get the windmill to drive the generator
and it will charge the 'phone and the extra batteries
all is good
but the wind drops
you are becalmed for weeks on end
you have a good length of fairly light weight rope and a pully
perhaps off you boat
you can get power
you can wind the rope around the pulley on the generator
run it up to the roof of the cottage
pass it over the other pulley and
tie a roof slate or tile to the end of the rope
as the tile falls it will turn the pulley on the genertor
and charge your 'phone
onc the system is set up
every time you sant to run the generator
all you have to do is tie on another roof tile
and let it drop
you are not expending energy to turn the dynamo
you are exploiting gravity
you are harvesting the energy old time builders
invested in carrying the tiles up onto the roof
you percieve the process as
not being very energy intensive
but it is, when viewed as a whole, over time
however unreliable the wind is
it blows because the earth spins and the sun shines
nobody makes it blow
and whatever anybody does
the earth will continue to spin and the sun will
continue to shine
but eventually there will be no tiles left on the roof
there will be no fossil fuels
and we need to be ready

sometimes it is really disappointing
just how little cut through
some ideas have
people often have a sentimental attachment to
what they have had
and are completely blind-sided to
long establshed technologies that they
have read about but never actually owned
had in their hands
sometimes the familiar technology could have, say
60 per cent effectiveness
and the new technology could have
95 per cent effectiveness
and a lorra lorra people would say
the new system is not 100 per cent effective
so it's not worth the bother of changing
when you want to launch a space craft
you do the heavy lifting with
rockets
it is a bit complicated right here but
the only rockets that really matter
that are not publicity stunts
are
the rockets that launch
nuclear weapons
and they launch from
submarines
the first stage of launching a
nuclear warhead
is to get the rocket out of the boat
and through the water to the air above
nuclear submarines are sturdy
but they do not have the durability of a
space rocket launch pad
and there are people living on that boat
somehow you have to get the missile way above the
water and the submarine
before you set off the rockets
the actual method is probably secret
but the problem is obvious
once you think about it
so far as we know
nuclear submarines don't tow launch pads
around in their wake
despite all the sob stories about
ruined engines and such
people have taken to
diesel as a substitute for petrol
very well indeed
diesel is around twenty per cent cheaper than petrol
and that somehow clinches the deal
LPG is half the price of petrol
liquified petroleum gas
but it hasn't tken off at all
thre are three fuels available on the forecourt
diesel, petrol, LPG
the difference is
an LPG vehicle is a dual fuel vehicle
it runs of either - at the flick of a switch
LPG or petrol
perhaps there are
LPG or diesel versions??
more versatility, much greater cost savings
but no takers
that is the history of automotive fuel
very interesting
people roll up and buy the cheap stuff
not the very cheap stuff
and not the premium fuel - petrol
so far as we know people always justify buying diesel
on the grounds that it is cheaper
but mega cheap does not interest them
is LPG too cheap to inspire confidence?
perhaps we like a discount
but
we are suspicious of a bargain
we now want to return to our nuclear submarine
but we want to consider not the nuclear warhead
but
a satelite
a space ship
consider those space trip developments
the passenger vehicle is lifted
through the atmosphere
by a conventional aircraft
and then launched by rocket power
into space
what we have here is
fuel plus air gives energy
but beyond the atmosphere
there is no air
no air means no oxygen
and so further progress requires
a two component 'fuel'
one component to be burned
the other to provivde the oxygen
and so it is
once you are in a space craft in space
you can get pwere from
photovoltaics
solar cells
but you can get power from a stack of
fuel cells
three types of cell
solar - an array
electrochemical - a battery
fuel cells - a stack
in space there's
no kind of atmosphere
no free oxygen
when satelites carry and use
fuel cells
they have to carry fuel - usually hydrogen
and oxygen
fuel cells are less than 50 per cent efficient
at producing electricity
they also produce heat
just as a diesel or petrol engine does
if you are in a spacecraft
and your activities dictate that your solar cells
are not always pointed at the sun
you may use solar power derived electricity to
split water into oxygen and hydrogen
and store them so that they can be fed to
fuel cells to make electricity
when the sun isn't shining on your solar cells
they bin dooin it for decades
up there
if your fuel cell is in a ground vehicle
the vehicle is surrounded with/by air
air that is free and you don't have to carry around
and so you can
get away with
just carrying the hydrogen and not the oxygen
BUT,br. the fuel cells get very hot
just like a petrol or diesel engine
and air contains
80 per cent nitrogen
and if you get a mixture that is
a load of oxygen and a load of nitrogen
that hot
the nitrogen gets singed
conbined with the oxygen
and the vehicle does not produce
only water
it produces water and oxides of nitrogen when diesel engines produce them
hence
for congested spaces
for indoor vehicles
in the likes of warehouses
carrying both the oxygen and the hydrogen
and not letting any nitrogen anywhere near
hot oxygen
is the formula for a
ZERO emissions vehicle
and so we move to
the distinction between
blue hydrogen
and
green hydrogen
green hydrogen is
water plus energy equals oxygen plus hydrogen
oxygen plus hydrogen equals water lus energy
blue hydrogen is
methane CH4 plus oxygen equals hydrogen plus CO2
methane is natural gas
it is a carbon atom surrounded by 4 hydrogen atoms
carbon dioxide is
a carbon atom linked to two oxygen atoms
producing blue hydrogen
releases carbon dioxide
it does not provide, produce, oxygen
and so when we put blue hydrogen into a
fuel cell
either we take the oxygen from the air amd
produce oxides of nitrogen
or we have to use a process such as
air fractionation
to separate oxygen and nitrogen from the air
and feed only oxygen to the fuel cell
the upshot is
we can have
blue hydrogen with little investment
but as new plant is commissioned
it should produce green hydrogen
nobody should be contemplating building
new plant to convert methane into
hydrogen and carbon dioxide
new plant should take
electrical energy to
split water into hydrogen and oxygen

19th March

It has to be said
for some people, the likes of our Ricker
there has to have been a dilemma
on CoViD vaccines
jumping the queue
being reluctant
so this is the compromise
our Ricker had the Astra Zenica jab today

17th March 2021

some of the details about fertility are vague
one thing we don't know about figures for is
how soon after giving birth
can you fall pregnant?
the accepted time scale is 6 weeks
less if not breast feeding...
many cultures have a tradition of
post partum confinement
women are suppored to stay home for a period
after giving birth
is this to avoid a bounce back pregnancy or
to allow time for mother-baby bonding?
the new wave consideration is
should we expect women who are
trying for a baby
be expected to self isolate?
in a culture free world
all women of
child bearing age
who are not trying for a baby
should be expected to be
on the pill
if they are too ill to take the pill
perhaps they should be self isolating anyway
and thus
a woman who
pulls whilst walking down a street
should not be at risk of
unwanted pregnancy
the point we are driving at here is the
drive from certain quarters to
expand the concept of rape to include
seduction
the idea that consent
is revokable
revokable consent is not consent
some people only need to
try for a baby
for a handfull of weeks
some people are at it for years
should those people who are constantly
trying for a baby be on the loose anyway
it is perfectly reasonable to say
sex cannot be rape
unless it involves
breaking and entering
breaching somebody's
trying for a baby confinement
all trades have become accustomed to
special arangements for
home visits to the shielding
shielding to avoid
pregnancy by the wrong partner
is post CoViD viable

perhaps it's the onset of his second childhhod
but our Ricker is experiencing things long forgotten
he is waking up
bleary eyed
waking up needing a wee while to
get things into focus
and that leads us on to a Sam
Ricker is old enough to be one of those people who
got into computers because that was something
clever people did
the Sam is
once upon a time when somebody asked you what you did
if you said
I'm in computing
not IT then
their eyes would glaze over
later if the person said
I understand you are in IT
the computer expert's eyes would glaze over
IT has joined the long list of
jarbs in which to
park morons
these days
there's a fault
insert a voicemail stating we are
working on it
job done

16th March 2021

Straker & Love
made white facing bricks at
Brancepeth Colliery, Willington, County Durham
our Ricker lived around those parts
for three years when he was a student at
Durham University
and he can't remember his address
it was 1, Cross Street
but it wasn't Sunderland Bridge
it definitely wasn't Hett
there was this famous fashon designer bloke
who grew up in Hett
that wasn't our Ricker
so we have to suppose that people
perhaps the Pease family
digging for coal
found white brick clay
anyway
we are thinking...
those bricks stamped PEASE
perhaps they were made by Straker & Love

This wall is the original wall of
either
Church House
or
White House School
associated with
Christ Church Coatham

Christ Church Coatham
has a lych gate
apparently not a lot of churches have one of them
and the red brick building over the road is
the version of
Coatham C of E school where our Ricker started out on
his education
now housing association accommodation

15th March 2021

there will be statistics about where
industrial accidents happen
one leading example is the small
factory or workshop where the manager takes a
holiday and the workforce take the opportunty to
prove to themselves that
all that health and safety stuff is 'nonsense'
here's the thing
those under mangers have a lot in common with
police officers
cut the clever crap
don't do it if there is a risk
don't indulge in
risk assessments
shut down, go home, buy it from the Chinese
we are located near a major industrial complex
they don't let the police or fire service on site
one day there was a gala on the Trunk Road Rec
it's next to the fire station
the fire service rolled out a fire tender
Wilton International
brought a
mobile monitor
the mobile monitor was
half as wide again and half as long again
as the fire truck
the fire fighters made themselves scarce
we are very sure that no serving police officer
was alive, lived through
The Blitz
every time there is an industrial incident
not here, the wooden tops have more sense
the police say
keep your doors and windows closed
some people have toughened glass in their windows
some people have laminated glass in their windows
people in London in the blitz had
tape on their windows
some people in the blitz were killed by flying glass
because they kept their windows closed and they
weren't taped, tpughened or laminated
doesn't stop the fuck wit cops telling people to
close their doors and windows
and so
to advice on personal safety....
waste of space
worse than useless
we could go on
the proper advice is
stay away from doors and windows
you won't get that from the filth

we see an analogue of
natural selection
in the mechanisms of the state
the selective pressure is
hold tight to nurse
for fear of something worse
the police have evolved
from pigs - bestial
to pig shit - thick as
because
of a fear that any attempt at reform would
create an
inter regnum of outright chaos
but we have to ask
thirty years ago...
would the met have hired a
fully formed adult psycho?
idiots, woodentops, yes
but out and out psychos is new
this chap
this agent provocateur
was hired two years ago
and to all appearances his was a case of
on the inside pissing out
not sacked and on the outside pissing in
a transfer from
the provinces...
not internal exile in the Lake District
but hiding in plain sight in
London

13th March 2021

12th March 2021

Charlie Chaplin's
first major movie was
The Kid
in the first act he adopts a foundling child
in the second act we are five years on
Charlie is a jobbing glazier
he roams streets where the windows are the
sash and mullion type
the overall window is made up of individual panes
that are around one foot by a foot and a half
Charlie carries a wooden frome on his back
and that contains sheets of glass
of appropriate size
his adopted foundling runs down a street and
throws stones at windows
Charlie wanders down the street
and offeres to do the repairs
and so the the UK police force
crime figures flagging
hire a bunch of psychopaths
to liven life up a bit
the history of this century in the UK is
make something illegal
something entirely everyday
people stop doing it
soooooooo
the historic cases units
prosecuting people for doing things at a time when they
weren't CONSIDERED illegal
even if the letters of the law is vague enough
that they can now be interpreted as illegal
and so
ambulance chasing lawyers are not
charged wth importuning
or being vexatious litigants
because...
that would kill an industry and
cost jarbs
nd the classic case is?
the London congestion charge
designed as a money spinner
and resulting in traffic calming

11th March 2021

we want at this point to remark about
the fact that
RBCs red blood constituents
last around 110 days in use and are
then recycled
we feel the need to point out that
when an RBC is part its
recycle by date
it will loose its
hydrodynamic toroidal or doughnut shape
and begin to resemble the cells
characteristic of
sickle cell disease
sickle disease is essentially
the polymerisation of the haemoglobin S. Essentially, people with sickle
have RBCs with a drastically shorter
safe usable life span
in either sickle or CoViD
extra EPO erithropoetin
may adjust the bone marrow to replace RBCs
more quickly and reduce the
risk of clotting
or some other therapy to draw the attention of
macrophages
to the need to recycle RBS more quickly may help

today we are on to a topic our Ricker is not
clear about
and so we will be researching it
oxygen saturation is the fraction of
oxygen saturated haemoglobin to
total haemoglobin
what we don't know is exactly how this is done
we are about to guess
what we know is that
arterial blood is bright red
and venus blood is more a blue tinged kind of red
and so when a little gadget 'measures' the
SpO2 of a patient's blood
it is measuring how blue the blood is
so it can do this by shining a light through a finger
we are therefore assuming that the
gold standard of oxygenation of the blood is
set at a level of blueness tht is set as
SpO2 100
and any trace of blue reduces the number in proportion
this would mean that a big blue varicose vein
a pool of almost static blood would havw quite a low number
and would not be a suitable test site
it is all geared to a healthy finger
damaged or scarred skin tissue cannot be measured
by a pulse oxymeter
what this technique apparently cannot do is
measure how much haemoglobin is in the blood
it just tells us, how oxygenated the present haemoglobin is
there is a small issue here
take a tissue, in this case bone marrow
bane marrow makes red blood elements called corpuscles
corpuscles means bodies, little bodies
derived from cells but no longer cells
if the bone marrow is helping fight an infection
by producing a lorra lorra white blood cells
it's ability to produce rbcs
may be reduced, hampered
just think of this
a fleet of trucks
some are bought by a scrap yard and
cart off trucks at end of life
even though they were made in the same plant
the bone marrow makes rbcs and macrophages
when the chemistry of an rbc fails
this is a signal for a macrophage to
swallow and destroy it
phosphatidylserine versus CD47
who knew?
the idea is that when the balance of these two in the RBC changes
the macrophages smell trouble and pounce
thing is
if the macrophages are busy
busy fighting an infection
they may miss their RBC chemical cue
and the body may begin to soldier on with
relatively knackered RBCs
red blood corpuscles
in current parlance
there is an algorhythm controlling macrophage activity and
the presence of an infection switches macrophage activity away from
RBC destruction
and so the body is fighting an infection with increasingly knackered
RBCs
we could research more but for now we are simply saying
if there are lots of knockered RBCs circulating
how shall we say
they may get through the tissues and be deoxygenated
and then get swept through the lungs before they have time to
get fully oxygenated
and
we can say that the symptoms reported as
long CoViD
co-relate to an SpO2 as high as
95
the production of RBCs is controlled by the hormone
erythropoietin
used as a drug my bent athletes...
we want to contradict some writings here
RBCs originate from pluripotential stem cells
the first cell recognisable as heading for being an RBC is the
proerythroblast
the more generalised precursor cells could
due to another algorhythm
be diverted to become white blood cells in the case of an infection
add to this
blood will be directed to core structures
not skeletal muscles
hence the prostration in times of infection
that indicates
a trial of EPO in long CoViD patients

10th March 2021

sometmes there is an urgent issue at hand
and sometimes there is scope to
plumb the shallows of
our Ricker's magical mind
here is one of those questions that may amaze
what is the link between
Jimmy Saville
and
The UK Royal Family?
we have - in the UK at least - recently been plied with
a repeated trailer
quoting Jimmy Saville saying
I like girls
I don't like women, they know too much
it has been ponted out that
on the one hand you have
Princess Di and Kate
and on the other hand you have Megan
and the difference?
the first two joined The Firm as apprentices
Megan was hired as a fully fledged professional
it's like armed forces
they have a way of doing things
if you are a disgruntled butcher
and you join the forces to see the world
they won't put you in the catering corps
because you may be
set in your ways
perhaps you have heard the one about
the little girl - two or three years old
who says
my auntie says, when I grow up
I'm gonna be a proper little madam
Jimmy Saville was a rich and famous man
if he had sex with a little girl
she would be focused on the fact that he was
famous
I've had that Jimmy Saville up me you know
if he had sex wth a woman
she would be focussed on the fact that
Jimmy Saville was rich
'vulnerable women'
is a concept theat may indicate
a female not completely aware of the concept
no matter how much
you enjoy it
he's gotta pay for it
daily hire
or long term contract - marriage
we see these women all the time
Jackie Onasis
Maria Calas
from an age
but we see a slight glimmering of hope in
the woman who married the
Ocean's Eleven chap
there is some slight hint that Onasis had
Calas's only child killed in infancy
it is clear he was glad the child died
because her being a mother
damaged her role as a
trophy wife
really good singist, Maria Calas
how much
satisfaction in a job well done
did she ever get
if she was willing to give it up to
become a trophy wife?
did she sing for the joy of doing something
being a part of something
excellent
or to put herself at the head of the
marriage queue
Jackie Onassis
Jackie deBouverie??
Jackie Kennedy
so you are the widow of the
assasinated President of the United States
what do you do?
dedicate your life to public service?
marry your kids science teacher
like the now divorced ex wife of the
Amazon founder?
no you put yourself back on the market as a trophy wife
and Nobel Prize?
tosh
displaced Maria Calas prize
that's the one
Clooney, that's the man
George Clooney
the wife Amal, some sort of lawyer
barrister, Doughty Street chambers
St hugh's oxford
and he is the nephew of the singer
Rosemary Clooney
to consider the matter of women and girls having sex
from our Ricker's perspective
the George Clooney who is worth
500 million dollars
appears to be emulating
Orson Welles
he a famous film director
Citizen Kane etc
who ended up selling sherry in TV adverts
and George Clooney
millionaire not billionaire film actor and director
selling coffee in TV adverts
not in
early years
but as a possible swan song
back in the day
back in the days of black and white TV
people made documentaries about tribal culture
we are hearing about Myanmar these days
the women of the Kayan people of Myanmar
often wear neck rings
these give the impression that the women have
very long necks
actually, although they do distort the body
and so must be worn from a very young age
they actually push the collar bones down
rather than lengthening the neck
as we said, back in the day
people brought back film of these women
and prometed the idea that
their husbands had the right
as a tribal custom
to remove these rings if they say fit
and that without the support
the neck would break
and the woman would die
this cannot be so if the neck is not
sgnificnatly elongated
but these women are
mmodern day side show freaks
cultivated from an early age as a tourist attraction
nobody
nobody gives little girls the option of
having or not having
a man cave between her legs
you can have the neck rings or Myanmar
or the footbinding of China
but
girl bits are not
optional
not an impost for male gratification
you're born with a cunt so you can be fucked
and to ensure that you will get yourself fucked
you are built so that
somebody else can do a better job than you can
better in terms of gratification
our Ricker never developed a foot fetish
but he had intimations of how it could develop
long before he was capable of an erection
he discovered an orgasmic experience
probably because it had been fashionable at some time
our Ricker as a baby was furnished with
a candlewick bedspread
and he discovered the
orgasmic consequences of
rubbing the soles of his feet on said beadspread
Ricker's bedspread was very simple
just rows of tufts sticking up from a bed
live a blue furrowed field
not elaborate cruelwork
the problem with
inciting a child to engage in sexual activity
is not that they wouldn't engage in
orgasm inducting activity without prompting
it is that they are too young to understand that
when ever that happens
a man must give a woman money

8th March 2021

this is the sills being cast

this is the sill as cast

and these are the blocks waiting to be set on the sill
Somebody has found some old pictures of
Coatham Pier
as it was

we note that the pier ran down the side of the
Glasshouse
the start of the walkway was still there
up to the time the whole thing was demolished
we are guessing that
you didn't need to enter the glasshouse
to gain access to the pier

these are the things the fossil boys say
a steam engine is a coal engine
there are no vegetable oil based lubricants
hydrogen is made form fossil fuels
they are blindsiding almost everybody with the idea that
because a thing can be done a traditional way
it must be done a traditional way
if you have a petrochemical plant
and you want hydrogen
you just - so to speak - turn the dial to hydrogen
and you are making hydrogen from petroleum
if you don't have a petrochemical complex
if you have a hydro-electric dam
or a solar farm, or a wind farm, or a wave farm
you make hydrogen from water
so there is really no need to use the
getout
this isn't hydrogen, it's green hydrogen
hydrogen is hydrogen and there is no need to
involve fossil fuels in its cycle
water plus energy equals hydrogen plus oxygen
hydrogen plus oxygen equals water plus energy
end of

sometimes it is very difficult to draw
two related concepts together
when we speak of the imagined perils of incest
we should consider the problems a lot of people have
finding a match
finding a matching donor because they need
a transplant
sometimes a close relative is a match
often the match is somebody far from related to the patient
but perhps of the same race
people can be mother and child
and not sufficiently genetically similar to be
a match for transplant
simple rule
get a dose of the maost impressive male you can get your hands on
and leave the rest to nature

we are not in the know...
but Redcar and Cleveland College appear
to be installing
outdoor hard courts for sports
if they are
that is a good idea

6th March 2021

perhaps it is a tribute to
just how solid the shale bed of
Coatham Bay
is
but the guys have finally got the last of the piles
into the foundations of the
New Regent
we have lost count of how many
pilling machines they have had to use to get there
very solid foundations will be possible
if the appropriate gear can be brought in
replacement pier reference

we said 23 pairs of chromosomes
plus the X and Y
there is a thing
we'll check before publcation
a bar body or a barr body?
plants have both male and female parts at the same time
stigma, stle, ovary - female
anthers and pollen - male
some animals - mainly fish and shellfish
can change gender according to circumstances
however
we more advanced beings
mammals and such
X and Y chromosomes
two X - female
one X and one Y - male
at its simplest
here's the thing
in every apparent male
there is an X and a Y chromosome
available for expression
X and Y complement each other
in females shock horror
in every cell of a female body
there is
one X chromosome and zero Y chromosomes
how so
at some pre-determined point in
female development
apparently at random
each cell in the developing female embryo
locks up one of its X chromosomes in
what is called a bar body
every female body is a
mosaic of cells
some with the X from their mother available for expression
some wth the X from their father available for expression
girl if X from dad, boy if Y from dad
in theory
half a woman's cells have a different
life expectancy from the other half
we are not aware of any studies on the effects, consequences
of this
but if - only - half your brain cells suddenly died
and the rest soldiered on
that might be a cause of dementia

barr body
is an inactive X chromosome
in a cell with more than one X chromosome
rendered inactive in a process called
lyonization
in species with XY sex determination
here's a fine point
in marsupials Australian types with pouches....
and some bits of the system in the rest...
where the dismissal is
always of the X chromosome from the male
now a dip into those rarer chromosomal abnormalities
Klinefelter syndrome folk are either
47,XXY
or
47,XXX
the 47,XXX - presenting as female - have
2 Barr bodies
in other news
we have said that genes no longer needed are
switched off not destroyed
genes in Barr bodies are by definition
switched off not destroyed
there has been a study
in which it was seen that the Barr bodies had
gone missing
in women with breast cancer
Nateker, Praschant E, DeSouza, Fatima M 2008
Reactivation of inactive chromosome in
buccal smear of carcenoma of breast
Indian Journal of Human Genetics
14 1 7-8
we like
we have not read this
but the title suggests that
the effect is throughout the body because we
interpret buccal as
growing in the lining of the mouth

we said that making eggs from body cells
involves throwing away half the genetic material
to make way for the genetic material from the male
that throw away becomes the
polar body
not to be confused with the Barr body
in Theory
a polar body could be fertilized
in theory it could give rise to a weaker twin
the great and wonderful Ricker has said all along that
the likes of cancers can be the result of
disused genes being switched off and not destroyed
and getting re-activated as opposed to
mutated
extra burger for that man

5th March 2021

we seek to offer
perspectives
not absolute truths
and this is our excuse for not researching beyond
our Ricker's mind
for most of our information
we have set a hare running about
farming, growing and genetics
you may know that potatoes orginate somewhere in
South America
and so any traditions about growing them elsewhere are
not very old
one of the BrExit issues is
can seed potatoes from Scotland
be sold into mainland Europe
and this raises the question what and why are
Scotts seed potatoes?
here is the idea in the mind of Ricker
Scotland has a shorter growing season than
areas further south
shorter not strating earlier as in the case of
Jersey Royals
we guess that as a result potatoes don't grow very big in Scotland
so we assume that each one weighs less but is
individually capable of
growing into a crop plant if transferred to the south
where growing conditions are better
so, what is the point of growing them up north?
potatoes are form of tomato??
well tomatoes don't have tubers
and potatoes don't have fruit
they are both of the genus
solanum
and you can, well 'they' can
graft a potato and a tomato together and produce a
pomato
here we set off the food fanatics
the solanums are from the family
solanaceae
the nightshades that include
deadly nightshade
which is why you NEVER eat potato tops
did some of the people who died in the
Irish potato famine
die from nightshade poisoning?
it's very important to know which parts of a plant or animal are
safe to eat
and
peppers are in the nightshade family too
not such a surprise...
and that is well away from the link between Scotland and potatoes
seed potatoes are not seeds
they are tubers
but they are not big enough to eat so they are seeds
in the sense of
seed pearls
little ones that will grow
why bother to
set them on
for their first year
in Scotland
the idea is
the weather is rough for potatoes
but it's worse for
their pests
this is an example of farmers and growers
growing FOR farmers
and we look to the opposite of the potato story
we look to cross bred sheep
living on
marginal land such as moorland
or marshland
they are bought in and grown up for market
but not necessarily bred from
this finds more extreme expression in pigs
we think that some pig crosses
hardly if ever breed
and that may be because they grow so fast and so big
that they wouldnot be able to give birth naturally
there reported to be breeds of dog that are
hyperexpensive to buy
because they can only be born by
C section
they need an operation to get out
so with hardy breeds of sheep
they may produce only one lamb
if they are a hardy breed
and that may not be economically viable
if they are living on prime pasture
so this is the idea of the down side
the morning after the night before
of F1 hybrid vigour
sometimes
in-breeding
is the answer
and the prime example of that is
thoroughbred racehorses
thoroughbred means inbred
by the best, out of the best

4th March 2021

we have the ability to put some of our analogies
into a Christian context
and so we here adapt a parable to be an analogy
the reference is
Mark 4:3-9
we take that to mean
Gospel according to St. Mark
chapter 4 verses 3 to 9
Listen, behold
a sower went out to sow
and as he sowed some seed fell along the wayside
and the birds came and devoured it
other seed fell on rocky ground
where there was not much soil
and the they sprand up immediately
but soon shrivelled
since there was no depth of soil
and when the sun rose it was scorched
and since there was no root
it withered away
other seed fell amongst thorns
and the thorns grew up and choked it
and it yielded no crop
and some fell on good ground and yielded
thirty, sixty, a hundred fold
end paraphrase
n a sense this is a story about the trials of being
a missiary
but we can adapt it in the sense of
returning to the farming basis and considering lvestock
not converts to a new religion
it is in the nature of genetic defects that some are
dominant and some recessive
some do harm, some fail to do the necessary
there is no sense in which Jesus was referencing genetics
but there is a basic, classic, understanding of
the biology of recessive traits
situations where an inadequate version of a gene
runs in a family
the basic requirement is to understand that for
23 of the 24 chromosomes
there is a copy of each gene from each of
mother and father
pair 24 is the X and the Y
it's simple maths - arithmetic even
several options
focusing on one gene
every cell of every person's body
has two copies of each gene
one from father and one from mother
a vital part of the production of
eggs and sperm is to produce these cells with
only one copy of each gene
reproductive sex is
like taking a fancy leather jacket and
unzipping one zip and changing the shape of the jacket by
zipping together halves of zips that weren't together before
taking the simplest example of genetic disorder
if a parent has one adequate gene and one inadequate gene
they will be OK
they won't necessarily be fighting fit but they will be OK
they will produce either eggs or sperm that have
a fifty fifty chance of having an adequate or inadequate gene
the other one having been thrown away to make way for the
partner's gene
one partner normal, one partner half and half
overall the kids will be OK
not great but OK
and liable to pass on the defect
this is why it is said that genetic traits sometime
skip a generation
the arithmetic says
if two people each with one adequate and one inadequate gene
produce kids
a quarter of them will be knackered
half of them will be OK
and a quarter of them will be normal
not only normal but unable to pass on the defect
families like this will
not die out
but they will suffer significant levels of
infant mortality and still birth
and many don't think that is reaon to
not have kids
some think it is
we think comic
Caroline Aherene
took that view
she of
Mrs Merton
and
what first attracted you to
millionaire Paul
fame
various cancers ran in her family and we
understand that she decided not to have children
on that account
but hers was a complex life
whatever, the point is
severe genetic diorders can persist because
having two copies of most genes
the defective ones can survive
masked or carried through life by their
adequate partner
when they crop up or manifest themselves
it is not as a new mutation
but as a revelation
that would apply to a DNA virus such as
adenovirus
but not to an RNA virus such as influenza or SARS

from little acorns
mighty oaks do grow
it is in the structure of a
free society that
somebody who as a youngster
preferred a paper round to homework
can be the person who ends up ownng and controlling
the mega conglomerate
because they are not distracted by
expertise
they just have to sell cheap and buy cheaper
and so
perhaps a farmer is not the sharpest knife in the box
BUT
there is another dimension
being what is now called
an influencer
can come from something other than
Brand Power
it can come from the
cute factor
over the decades if not centuries
people have built up
animal sancturies
into zoos
and to some extent
zoos are run like farms
in a different sense
you have two main routes to building a
major enterprise
you can build up from small beginnings
you can borrow or collect as donations
a whole big bunch of money before you set out
say you want to contrast the two approaches by
example of a dairy farm
if you start with a pet calf
bought with pocket money
you will probably be offered ar given a calf that
is not of good genetic stock
a runt or reckling
as you build up your herd
you will find that milk yields are none too impressive
and you will be encouraged to buy
quality bull semen for your cows
and thi approach may be referred to as
stregthening the breed or the herd
if you start with mega bucks
you will buy the very best cows right from the start
so the person with a lot of public sympathy
because they
save the recklings
is faced with high vet bills
most species operate on the basis of a level of
infant mortality
that modern humans find completely unacceptable
in humans, pets, farm animals and zoo animals
natural selection is thwarted
for sentimental reasons
there are a couple of problems with this
one of which is a solution
people don't want to be seen as reckless
having children even though they know
something appauling
runs in their family
so they promote the concept of
rampant mutations
luck f the draw
it could happen to you
even though it is unknown in any of your relatives
the posative is that
if a genetic defect runs in your family
you will probably be part of a self help community
sharing coping strategies
and are more likely to partner up with someone
in whose family the same defect runs
this will limit spread throughout society
the difficulty is if you take the
strengthen the breed concept to another level
combine it with the
random mutation concept
and you get the idea that
in-breeding CAUSES mutations
on account of it pisses God off or something
some plants will not grow from seed
any plant grown from a cutting
is cloned
the ultimate in in-breeding
for the most part
there are three types of genetic abnormality
a gene that fails to do its job
a gene that does something harmful
a gene that does something helpful
the main reason for
vegetative propergation
multiplying stock by taking cuttings
aside from the brick wall ones such as
seedless grapes
is that the children or grandchildren
have genetics that are so hyped up
that they become infertile
a Jaffa orange
hyped up children are referred to as
F1 hybrids
hyped up grandchildren are referred to as
F2 hybrids
you may see this on labels in the garden centre
F1 is first filial generation
F2 second filial generation
you can in that sense
over strengthen the breed
get a sort of Downs Syndrome type
overkill
the problem with zoos is
they 'live in fear of'
damaging their stock by in-breeding
and so shuttle breeding animals around the world
to breed with 'unrelated' members of their species
what we are now proving is that
where you can't prove that two animals are related
they are effectively from
different species
we have had the latest Attenborough telling us
they look the same to humans but
they can see in UV and they look completely different
and so
often
attempts to
breed in captivity
fail because you are attempting to
cross two slightly different species
and if you succeed you create a third species
and that's not conservation
if it ain't broke don't fix it
if a colony of rodents
are happliy and healthily in-breeding
don't try to strengthen the breed
if they are suffering from genetic morbidity
pension them off and start afresh with healthy stock

2nd March 2021

there are people who are called things such as
venture capitalists
people who take pension contributions and savings
and invest them in big lumps
as opposed to personl loans
and home mortgages
they finnce such things as
new gigafactories to make
car batteries
they could also finance a
new coal mine
these people are amart and well informed
they know there is no future in coal
and no future in coking coal
if they finance a new coal mine
they are looking for a return in terms of
compensation from the government
if the government shut it down
the best envronmental 'lesson' to these people is
let them invest in a new coal mine
don't give them anything but permission
no government grants
and t let them find out for themselves that there is no market
for the product
a thing they already know
so the whole game is about
positioning for government grants and
cancellation compensation
it's a finacial manipulation
not an industrial investment

1st March 2021

God we're good
put
was Henry Ford left handed
into a search engine...
Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford
are listed as left handed
4 of the most recent US presidents have been
left handed
plus the UK's Prince William
and so
not so much
anti-British
more
we gotta choose one out of many
real quick
choose the odd ball
most of the world drives on the wrong side of the road
because they bought cars from a lefty

white rabbits
is the first thing you are supposed to say
on the first of March
it's a bit like
first footing
on New Year's Eve
you make sure that the first person to
enter your home in the new year is
a friend
or yourself
of course Arctic hares have white coats in winter
and grey brown ones in summer
perhaps hares that retain their winter coat are
easier to hunt
perhaps it's just the moult of the hares
marks the coming of spring

our Ricker watches a bit of day time TV and he
picks up on obscure things
most people in the UK who have ever done anything
remotely related to
motor vehicle maintenence
will have heard of the trade name
Castrol
Castrol was an engine oil company
bought out by Burmah Oil
and then BP or bp
a bloke called Wakefield set it up
Castrol holds the sort of secret that the
fossil boys like to keep well hidden
the origin of the name Castrol is
caster oil
the significant element in providing the
keep working at both low and high temperatures
element
depends not on a mineral oil
but on vegetable oil

It is the 20th anniversary of
The Great Heck Train Disaster
Ricker has not forgotten that
Tanya working for
Janice Webster's
University of Teesside
spin off company
created the official police
3D reconstruction of the events of that day

in no way do we resent the emancipation of
non-straight people and cultures
but sometimes we think
authority figures are slow to catch on
and that rather than the emancipation can cause problems
so far as we know
lesbianism has never been illegal in the UK
the emphasis has always been on
homosexuality amongst those with
boy bits
as though the authorities have never heard of the
strap-on
anyway
what the authorities seen completely blind to is
well let's step back
back in the late seventies and early eighties
Cleveland County Council
had an out gay secondary supply science teacher
called Austin
first name
not a problem
and he was wont to perform at the
Edinburgh Fringe
strange days indeed
the probelms, if there are any, come with gays
in the closet
however, throughout time we have had
gays hiding in plain sight - lesbians
and the difficulty is that when a female
becomes over protective of another female
we don't see that as
stalking
to go back to Gillbrook school
at a point in time
a woman art teacher was promoted to
head of department
within a year
all the art teachers apart from the head of department
were men
it was remarked upon but no action was deemed necessary
take Teesside Polytechnic or University
a woman head of department with a staff consisting of a
string of pretty young girls....
what's sauce for the goose is
sauce for the gander
but what's sauce for the gander is not
sauce for the goose
a gander being a male goose
this line about
women with a complaint against a man
need provide no evidence
and
polce can step in, due to a report of
concern for the welfare of a woman
when she has expressed no distress herself
is a charter for the
lesbian consumed with jealousy over a
girl's association wth a boy or man

26th February 2021

is this a reminder of what happens when
the local guys bring their
man tools to town
are bambam on trust a trader?
not auditioning to
build us a replacement pier?

at this time we are seeing the consequences of
viccine nationalism
playing out
it reminds Ricker of the long road we have been on
regarding motor vehicles
there are countries around the world where
vehicles are driven on the left
with the driving seat on the right of the vehicle
we can think of the UK and Australia
we know that the motor car is supposed to have been
invented in mainland Europe
we are not going there today
there is an exampe of the
quiet genius of the British here
and the time it takes to correct for
reflexly doing the opposite of
wht the British do
most people are right handed
they have a right hand that is more skilled than their left
in a simple car that has to be driven
the major hand work is the steering
in a simple car there is
a four on the floor gear shift
at some point this was joined by a
three on the tree option
if you are right handed and you drive with the gearbox
to your left because the drive train is in the
center line of the vehicle
when you change gear - and you do that occasionally
you remove your less skilled hand from the steering wheel
if you sit to the left of the gear box
every time you change gear
you remove your more skilled hand from the steering wheel
to compensate
such as the Americans, who drive on the right
developed the gear shift on the steering column
three on the tree
to minimise the duration of
less skilled steering
and eventually developed the
automatic gear box
most Americans do not drive
stick shift
they drive automatic
and this is beacuse
people - car manufacturers - decided that
in their country
things would be done
the opposite way to the British

25th February 2021

this?
only on Redcar Beach
these balls are
iron ore sinter
that has escaped from the steel works and
washed up on Coatham Beach

nestling in here amongst the toys
the first of the pre-cast blocks of concrete
that will form the base of new Regent

24th February 2021

The BCG Tuberculosis vaccination was
introduced for UK school leavers in 1953
at that time that age was 14 years
BCG refers to Baccilus and the names of the
two French developers
Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin
it was developed between 1908 and 1921
Tommy, our Rickers dad
had a neat pattern of
four or five scars on one of his arms
since he was in France in the army
between 1916 ad 1919
we guess he was involved in a BCG trial
here's a bit of history
in the 1970s in the UK pupils leaving school
in the 1970s had the BCG jab
but people taking up jobs in
schools in Cleveland County, England
at that time
were not given the vaccination
they were required to have a chest X-ray
to prove they did not have TB
just the one on joining
not regular repeats
and there were mobile testing units
like the mobile breat x-ray units of today
so that people could get the test easily
the flaw with that is that Ricker had had the BCG
when he was at school
so in a way
proof of vaccination was not taken as
proof of absence of disease
and Ricker must have had a lower dose that his dad because
he got no scar

Hambleton
is a district council within North Yorkshire County Council
the reason why
Redcar and Cleveland was originally called
Langthingy Lang bar
was to try to convince
Great Ayton and Perhaps Stokesley to be in it
because there is a geological feature in Great Ayton called
Langbaugh
they settled on the name and then
Canny Yatton pulled out
decided to stay with Yorkshire
so at that time
both Cleveland and North Yorkshire had
two tier local government
the arrangement was that
Cleveland was the county - education and such
and the districts were
hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbrough and
Langthingy
then the area went to unitary authorities and
Cleveland County Council was wound up
this history is why Middlesbrough is so small
it's to do with business rates
the steel industry had their business rates collected by
Hartlepool and Langthingy
the petrochemical industry had their business rates collected by
Stockton-on-Tees and Langthingy
so when Langthingy became unitary
and it still didn't have Great Ayton in it
it got a name change to
Redcar and Cleveland
not even Redcar and East Cleveland
Middlesbrough didn't have much
we are not sure it had
The Cleveland Centre
it didn't have a big university or
a big hospital
it couldn't raise much in the way of
business rates
and hence the two tier system so that
Cleveland County could take some of the money
raised by the industrial districts
and spend it in Middlesbrough
then Unified Business Rates came in
central government took the lot and
distributed back locally according to need
not according to
installed property
central government acing as a mega Cleveland County
then quite recently
central government decide to allow
local authorites to keep
half of the business rates they collected
and Middlesbrough was back in the mire
but less so because there had been the above mentioned
developments
but they are so to say
more dependent of central government grants than
the other three
and Hambleton
would still be better off in
Redcar and Cleveland
than in North Yorkshire
we checked the spellings
Langbaurgh Ridge
Langbaurgh Grange, hall, Cottage, Quarry
Nunthorpe Village
takes Middlesbrough right to the edge of
Great Ayton but Redcar and Cleveland are there too
with
Newton Under Roseberry in Redcar and Cleveland
but
Roseberry Topping
split
half in R&CBC and half in Hambleton

23rd February 2021

if we work on the assumption that
wards within Redcar And Cleveland were
recently revised
around five years ago?
and so reflect population fairly well
and we forgot three councillors when
discussing Greater Eston
the ones who have some reason to think they live in
Middlesbrough
Teesville has 3 councillors on R&CBC
and they live between Eston and Middlesbrough
but their electorate would not top up
Middlesbrough Parliamentary
so Eston 3, Grangetown 2, Normanby 3, Ormesby 3
That's not North Ormesby
South Bank 2
16 R&CBC councillors who represent
Greater Eston or Middlesbrough
depending on your choice
Coatham 2, Dormanstown 2, Kirkletham 3, Newcomen 2
West Dyke 3, Wheatlands 2, Zetland 2
16 representing Redcar
Longbeck 1, ST Germain's 3,
4 representing Marske
but wait
do the Wheatlands councillors represent
Redcar or Marske?
nobody knows
Guisborough?
Belmont 2, Guisborough 2, Hutton 3
Skelton East 2, Skelton West 2
Brotton 3
Lockwood 1
Loftus 3
Saltburn 3
so 16 play... 41 is it?
or 16 for Greater Eston
16 for Redcar
and 25 for East Cleveland
so 28 out of 57 R&CBC councillors vote for the
MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
and we do not known whether the 3 Teesville councillors
vote Middlesbrough or Redcar
what we do know is
Greater Eston mainly has the post or zip code
TS6
but a small part of it is TS7
Redcar is TS10
Teesville is TS6
and we have no idea why it has so many councillors
perhaps it takes in chunks of Eston or South Bank

22nd February 2021

Ricker thinks it's something to do with the fact that
so far he hasn't replaced all his window frames
every now and again he will hear a scratching sound
in the house
today he nearly trod on this little chap
on the kitched floor
although he has had snow drops for a while
butterflies emerging...
even more exciting

21st February 2021

Here is the crux or the ramblings that follow
if Middlesbrough has 59,000 electors
and any re-arrangement of boundaries requires
between 70,000 and 80,000 electors
if Middlesbrough is extended to the south
the re-naming of Langthingy as
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
looses validity
a bit like re-naming Brighton as
London South
and so the myth making to suggest that
Greater Eston is already in Middlesbrough

20th February 2021

we feel we are going on a bit about
Middlesbrough
but....
the parliamentary constituency is different from
the borough
the Boundary Commission
has a strange sort of 'independence' from parliament
parliament keeps charging the commission with
producing new boundaries
and then ignores the conclusions
the latest idea is to create a constituency of
Middlesbrough and Eston
and that would be aprt in Middlesbrough borough
and part in Redcar and Cleveland
unless the boundaries of the boroughs are changed
first define Middlesbrough
1868 to 1885
Linthorpe, and the parts of
Middlesbrough Ormesby and Eston that were
north of the road from Eston to Yarm
1974 - 83
Berwick Hills, Marton, North Ormesby, St.Hilda's
Thorntree, Tollesby
1983 to 97
Acklam, Beckfields, Beechwood, Berwick Hills,
Gresham, Grove Hill, Kirby, Linthorpe,
North Ormesby, Pallister Park, St.Hilda's
Southfield, Thorntree, Westbourne
1997 - 2010
Acklam, Ayresome, Beckfield, Beechwood
Brookfield, Clairville, Gresham, Kadar,
Grove Hill, Linthorpe, Middlehaven,
North Ormesby, Brambles Farm, Pallister Park
Thorntree, University
Middlesbrough the borough is that
plus
Easterside and Park End
which are now in
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
two wards and you get the M word
Middlesbrough Parliamentary has around
59,744 electors (2018) constituencies are supposed to have
around 70,000 electors
depopulation is such that it was formed from
Middlesbrough East and Middlesbrough West
Middlesbrough East was created for the
1918 election and abolished for the 1974 election
as was Middlesbrough West
parts of Middlesbrough West were in Thornaby
1974 - 1983
and are now in
Stockton South
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland has
71,264 (2018) electors
about the correct size
IF
number of MPs is not reduced from 650 to 600
as proposed

Redcar constituency consistes of
Redcar, Marske-by-the Sea, Eston, South Bank
and has
65,524 (2018) electors
not really any to spare for the
dwindling Middlesbrough
you could even up Middlesbrough and Redcar
by transferring 2,000 or so votes
but they would both still be undersized
if one of these constituencies were abolished
there would be 84,063 electors left for each remaining one
with Hartlepool at around 70,000
it would be easy to argue for no further abolitions
but at 600 MPs...
the remaining...
80,000 is not a lot more than the standard 76,000
carving up Middlesbrough between
Redcar and Stockton South
could present some problems but
the south half to Redcar and the north to Stockton South
could work if Redcar is re-named
Stockton South, Cleveland, and East Cleveland
are possibilities
but that would put Marton-in-Cleveland into
Cleveland along with Redcar
not
East Cleveland
and Guisborough into East Cleveland
how you get Stockton North up from 65,525
depends on what parts of Stockton South
are available
alternatively
Stockton, Middlesbrough, Cleveland, East Cleveland
means a whole bunch of Stockton South moved
into Middlesbrough
it's no use Redcar and Middlesbrough scrapping over
Eston
there is population decline not growth there
as of 2011 the population of Eston was 7,005
6,930 (2011) population of Normanby
5,088 (2011) popupation of Grangetown
so... population of
Greater Eston 19,023
it makes up about one third of Redcar constituency
and is in the borough of
Redcar and Cleveland
we would say
the population of Eston is fairly stable but not growing
the populations of South Bank and Grangetown are
on a steady to steep decline
evidenced by a reduction from three to two ward councillors
we think that's each
going to three councillors between South bank and Grangetown
can't be far off
so ten years ago the population of Greater Eston was probably
nearer 30,000
maybe that was 20 years ago
to survive
Redcar probably needs to take in
Saltburn-by-the-Sea
and that will probably involved as much angst as
the earlier addition of
Marske-by-the Sea
and that throws up
Cleveland North or Cleveland Costal
and Cleveland South or Cleveland Rural
2021 is a census year but we don't expect to see the results
in a hurry
if we define Redcar as
Coatham, Dormanstown, Kirkleatham, Newcommen, West Dyke
Zetland
that is excluding the likes of Marske
joined at the hip
the 2001 census had the population at 36,610
and the 2011 census had it at 35,692
we assume that as Dormanstown went from
3 councillors to 2
the population drop was in Dormanstown
we guess that population growth in
Marske and Kirkleatham
the southern outskirts
will soon if not in the 2021 census
outweigh population loss in Dormanstown
we will make the point we omitted earlier that our
pics of
Beyond Housing
were of the offices
there were no homes in the pictures of
Ennis Road and Ennis Square
and we should also note that Dormanstown also has
Farnedale Square about half the size of Ennis
but more vibrant
the difference between Redcar and Eston is
Redcar can expand into a lot of fairly level farmland
Eston has already run into
the Eston Hills and the section of the A174 that
forms a loop around Middlesbrough with the A66
Teesside heavy industry has its eastern edge
just west of Dormanstown
so Greater Eston is on a mega industrial estate
trapped between the hills and industry
Dormanstown is
too close
but not encircled
although there has been refurbishment of housing in
Greater Eston
there has not been expansion
as there has been in Redcar
it is interesting that as soon as
The Mo Mowlam Academy was completed in Redcar
there had to be an announcemet of
another replacement for its base in Grangetown
in Grangetown
there isshall we say
declining political pressure
now thatRedcar and Cleveland Council is not Labour controlled
to
duplicate everything in Redcar
in South Bank or Grangetown
we cannot remember the name of the crooner with the
straw boater and the cane
Frankie Vaughan
Grangetown Boys Club
Frankie Vaughan was a supporter of Boys' Clubs
and the Grangetown one is still going
founded 1941
we think Frankie Vaughan had something to do with
Grangetown Boys' Club moving from a pub
to the present purpose built location in the early years
perhaps the 1960s
we know little about it but we suppose it was for youngsters who
preferred football to that was a boom time for Greater Eston
4 secondary schools on a campus
only two remain
one from three if you discount the Roman Catholic one
The County Borough of Redcar and Cleveland
has two Westminster MPs
Redcar
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
we don't want to dwel on
the days when MS&EC was called
Langbaugh and
Michael, now Lord, Bates
lost it for the Tories
but he lost it to a steel works engineer called
Ashok Kumar
MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland means
MP for Guisborough and district
same old story
get the M word in there if you possibly can
we may return to the death of Ashok Kumar
he was alive and MP for Guisborough in 2003
he raised the question of
deaths amongst steel workers
he was Dr Kumar but a steel scientist not a medical man
he was unhappy about official statistics that showed
12 steelworkers a year
dying from lung disease
there is a parallel issue with former
Teesside Coroner Michael Sheffield
very slow to reach conclusions
the case in point was
Josef Horvath
Hungarian immigrant died of silicosis after being a furnaceman at
Warner Steel
age 65
Worh and Pension minister was Nick Brown
12 case between 1996 and 2001
said Nick Brown
nothing has changed
we see a Tory majority in
The House of Commons
but
a Labour Government
Consett had its steel works closed many years ago
but a study was done on
the health of former steel workers
and that showed
18 percent more throat cancer
in former steel workers than the norm
Ashok Kumar FIChemE
fellow of the institute for chemical engineering
MP for MS&EC (Guisborough) 1997 - 2010
with a gap
elected MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
3 times
elected MP for Langbaurgh once
Langthingy 7November 1991 to 9 april 1992
MS&EC 1May 1997 to 15 March 2010
that bloke Michael Bates is
Baron Bates
the establishment seems hell bent on
piling every role and honour they can think of onto
anybody our Ricker has criticised
the wages of failure is
The House of Lords
so why Vera Baird not there?
perhaps even for the
psychopaths at the top table
that was a step too far
or perhaps she is waiting for
the second coming of The Blair creature
Ashok Kumar died from
ischaemic heart disease
he was a chubby chap
perhaps he could have been saved by
heart bypass or coronary stent treatment
if being a chubby chap had been seen
not as a sign of prosperity
but as a
pre-existing health condition
53 years old
we think he lived alone in Marton
and declared himself as having no religion
he was bag carrier for Hilary Benn
so you see the conflict
Enviroment Department say
steel works kill people
Work and Pensions say
steelworkers are The Labour's front line troops
we expect our soldiers to die for the cause
better to die in your sixties from
an industrial disease
than die in your fifties
because you're a fat bastard
but what's the point of dying from
an industrial disease if
you won't have a widow to spend the compo?
Ashok Kumar was born in Inda but studied at
Aston University in Birmingham, England
our Ricker is old enough to have been driven past
Warner steel as a lad
it had one chimney
about three or four feet across
as seen from a distance
probably bigger
it was just one solid column of
never ending black filth
and people didn't like it
people had had to switch to
smokeless fuel - no coal in the domestic fireplace
and they wanted Warners shut down
obviously
central government
jarbs versus democracy
central government puts ascheme in place where
a local authority could shut down grossly polluting works
so they shut Warners
and the people were glad
until
they learned how much compensation Warners were paid
out of rates - council tax - for loss of enterprise
jarbs, jarbs, jarbs
the more dangerous the better
see
the furnaceman got
NO PENSION
double win
people with jobs
pay union subs
the unemployed, the retired and the dead, don't
and that's all that matters

19th February 2021

we like to publish corrections Ricker and his parents did the
weekly shop at Hintons
on a Saturday afternoon
not a Saturday morning
it may seem insignificant but two things hang on it
Rickers sister stayed home so she had the house to herself
unless she invited her boyfriend around
second
after shopping they did not go directly home
they went to 53, Junction Road Norton, Stockton-on-Tees
to have tea with
Auntie Mabel. Auntie Eunice, and Uncle Wilf
and again Ricker had to be good
he had to be mouse quiet
whilst Uncle Wilf checked his
pools coupon
as the football results were read out on the radio
such a good boy our Ricker

Britsh Explorer James Cook was the first known
non-Polynesian
to visit Hawaii
1778
he put it on the map
there is a current angle to that
at least 2
1 the union flag - the Great Britain flag
only properly referred to as
The Union Jack
when flown from a vessel - a ship or a boat
makes up as significant a part of the
State flag of Hawaii
as it does of the national flags of
Australia and New Zeland
the currently most significant result of the
colonisation that followed Cook putting Hawaii on the map was
explorers, traders and whalers arrived
and it is understood brought infections that
the locals had no immunity to
this is they story of the US
enclaves missing out on herd immunity
and of the UK too from what we hear
it does seem a bit of a stretch that crews could
make it all the way to Hawaii
as carriers of infection without keeling over
but who knows
we talked about the Paramount Chief whom Cook thought he had befriended
until his wife stepped in
he was apparently one of many
it wasn't until 1810 that one king for all of Hawaii emerged
that lasted until 1893
at that time it was a Queen who was overthrown because
Lliuokalani
business interest - American - resented Honalulu
and got the marines to support the establishment of
The Republic of Hawaii
the revolution did not overthrow
The British
but the local monarchy
and was intended as a pre-cursor to
annexation by the United States
which occured in 1898
the original revolution was carried out by
Lieutenant Lucian Young USN and the ships company of
USS Boston
162 US Navy and US Marine Corps personnel
versus 496 troops and 85 to 110 police
no US casualties, one Hawaiian wounded
US apologised in in 1993
the US bought Alaska
in theory
Hawaii is the only state of the union that had previously been
a soverign state
so it was never part of the
British Empire
but is now a part of the
American Empire

18th February 2021

This is one of those
put it into context
think pieces
Captain James Cook
7th November 1728
14February 1779
so died aged 49
Kealakekua Bay
is located on the Kona Coast of
Hawaii
and so
Captain Cook died in
the 50th state of
The United States of Ammerica
at a time when it wasn't a state of the USA
the story of Captain Cook's death can be seen
a couple of ways
the facts as we know them
and we assume they are the facts as recorded by
The British
are that Cook and Co.
arrived with many things
one of those things was a
longboat
a coble we assume since Cook was from
North Yorkshire
somehow it stopped being in the hands of
the Cook crew
and ended up with the locals
and so
the skirmish in which Cook died
can be seen as
Colonialism
if the mined set is
that the exercise was an attempt to
arrest a local tribal leader over the theft
if you see it as Cook intruding into a well developed
local culture
you can see the incident as
Cook and Co seeking to
take a prominent local dignitary as
a hostage against the return of
the 'borrowed' longboat
on 14th February 1779 Cook and his party
launched from
Resolution
with a company of armed marines
They went directly to the ruling chief's compound
where he was still sleeping
we can't properly render his name but
Kalani'opu'u
is our best effort
they attempted an urgent but non violent
arrest
the chief went peacefully
but his favourite wife tried to call him back
she set up a hue and cry
so what happened here was
on an earlier day
Cook and co had invited the chief to inspect
Resolution
and the chief thought this was another such visit
on the beach it appeared thqt all was not well and
the chief sat down and refused to move further
before long the beach was thronged with thousands of
natie Hawiians
so it goes -the British account
Cook smacked somebody with the flat side of his sword
all hell broke out
most of the company got back to Resolution
Cook was dead on the beach
then the 'British' version becomes
the story according to Bligh
William Bligh
later famous as the captain in the
Mutiny on the Bounty
said
he had watch this from Resolution and
the crowd had dragged Cook off the beach up a hill
and torn his body to pieces
it can be assumed that some Hawaiians died as a
result of the covering fire set up by the marines
to cover the retreat
it is recorded that the knife used to kill Cook
had been obtained by trade from Resolution on
the earlier courtesy visit to the ship
Resolution remained in the bay until
22nd February
to complete repairs to the mast
James Cook was married and had six children
many of our current ideas about race have earlier origins
people are not simply living in the moment
there is a phrase used in the
Yorkshire and Humber Region of England
that amy have it's origins in this event
the phrase means
to to be decent and trustworthy in one's actions
the phrase is
playing the white man
in the southern states of the United States the similar
that's mighty white of you
has currency
in essence
the Cook story begins - in modern terms
famous footballer vists old school and on leaving
discovers the hub caps are missing from his car
upsetting but no reason for a bloody riot
we can take three black characters from fiction
James Wait - never heard of him
Porgie as in Porgie and Bess
Othello - Shakespeare
this is fiction - all three
James Wait is the
Nigger of the Narcissus
in the short book by Joseph Conrad
essentially Wait has TB
tuberculosis
he is dying
but he takes passage on the Narcissus and
pretends to be more ill than he is
and does not help the crew
he does eventually die from his TB
Porgie is in a sense the opposite
he is a black crippled beggar
This is a Gershwin opera
I got plenty of nothin'
and nothin's pleanty for me
I got mo cr - got no mule
I got no misery
ascending the scale of
black characters people have heard of
Othello
tragic in a different way from
Romeo and Juliet
these portrayals of blackness
revolve around black being 'other'
there is no official help for Porgie
he has to shift for himself
Wait is not playing the white man
he is
swinging the lead
in nautical terms this is a means of sounding for
depth of water under a ship
however
marines as opposed to soldiers
were transported by sea
whereas soldiers marched
it could be that soldiers who walked with
a fixed knees
were transferred to the marines
as unfit to march
Ricker had aged parents
they never played with him
that is
no running around the garden
no bike rides
all attempts to get dad out of his armchair were met with
I've got a bone in me leg
very confusing for a toddler
literature therefore portrays
for the person with no direct experience of black people
that they are
big, strong, volatile, and untrustworthy
for balck people with little direct experience of
white people
white people are seen as rich and well educated
for instance
in Victorian Haverton Hill
the two communities rubbing along together were
Polish and Irish
black people would have had little exposure to
literature relating to that conflict
there synthetic experience of white people would be
literature about the slave - slave owner relatonship
the whites see Cook and Co with a dismasted ship
calling in to a port in Hawaii for repairs
and seeking to trade with the locals for
the things they need
and getting their stuff nicked
they do not see Cook running a raiding party
seeking to abduct locals to sell into slavery
one could say
not everybody who is white
is British
not everybody who is white
plays the white man
considering colonialisation
setting aside Japanese and Chinese concepts of a collony
take a family group of 10 Brits
on holiday in a place where tourism is
most of the export trade
they pay tentousand pounds for their stay
probably less but it fits the numbers
the locals spend that ten grand on
importing a car
that's trade
the locals have the weather and the workforce
the tourists have a car plant back home
without 'globalisation' the Brits could make less cars
and the locals wouldn't have cars
is that trade or colonisation?

16th February 2021

our Ricker had never eber heard of
Devonshire Road, Linthorpe, Middlesbrough
until he looked it up on a map
most Saturday mornings
when he was around seven to nine years old
Ricker could have been found sitting alone
in a maroon Hilman Minx
parked on Devonshire Road
right next to its junction with Linthorpe Road
on the town centre side
he was there because
that was down the side of
Hintons supermarket
and his mam and dad were in Hintons doing the
weekly shop
because
despite there being a Hintons in Redcar
Ricker's dad wanted to continue shopping in
the same shop he had shopped in
when he lived in Haymore Street
sometimes
Tommy needed to go in to work
and Ricker got to go with his parents when
they did the weekly shop in the Hintons one the corner of
Albert Road and Corporation Road
Hintons was an interesting supermarket
it existed from 1871 to 1984
and became a part of Argyl Foods
Presto
It's the Presto manifesto
I'm impressed
I'm in Presto
however...
The Hintons distribution centre is now used by
Morrisons supermarkets
thus there were three associated
large family firms
Morrisons, Hintons and Winterschladens
Winterschladens was a wine merchants
Ricker knew Ann Winterschladen
she launched herself into a journalistic career
in places such as Scarborough
as Ann Winters
perhaps she had a bright future ahead of her
but she died young from
an ectopic pregnancy
there wer things about Hintons supermarkets that
Ricker may reemember if he tries
but we will set down one issue
Ricker wasn't exactly bullied about this but he was
questioned
at school
they want to know how much
house keeping his mam got
because in a small town such as Redcar
the chattering classes couldn't figure out
where
the family did the weekly shop
so when he told them
he didn't include the Hintons checkout bill
and that caused consternation
these days there are those shops where you bay your own
Food Weighhouse and such
Ricker particularly remembers
baking ingredients
you got currants and fancy versions of sugar and all sorts
in a plain plastic bag
the top of which was closed with a collar
an oval of white cardboard with a green border
on which the contents, weight, and price were printed
so Hintons were buying in bulk
and splitting things out into
one handfull in a bag lots
they probably gabe
Green Shield Stamps
too
or perhaps their own pink version
funny the things you remember
that was job for Ricker
stickng the Green Shield stamps
into the book
the great thing was a sort of
fake cream?
chocolate cake
sold by the slice?
but Ricker's favouite was
tongue
sliced ox tongue
as a cold meat
but that wasn't the best
in his pram - obviously earlier
his mam would give him a
savoury duck
to keep him quiet
not sweets
you can still get them from the butchers on Redcar high Street
a sort of cold burger
cubic not flat
Rickeris so old that
there were no burgers when he was a kid
and no seseme seeds
they had
rissoles
thing is
so much rubbish had been put into the rissoles
during the war
that they had to be re-named s
burgers
we can go even further back
before Tommy went to war
working in the Co-Op
can I have a quarter of broken biscuits?
we haven't got any broken biscuits
can't you break some?

there are still people around who know the difference between
poverty
and
inequality

15th February 2021

We have finally got out far enough to
take the pictures to go with the story about
the man who built the
Sydney Harbour Bridge
here are some pictures of Ennis Road and
Ennis Square

plus a few of the Dormans retirement cottages
first to be built in the country

14th February 2021

we try and better try to put Teesside into context
sometimes a personal story does the trick
our Ricker's grandad lived in
Haverton Hill
and you can still see
Robson Street
named for William Robson
on
Geographers' A - Z maps
not that it's very long
and not that it has any buildings...
probably we haven't checked lately
It was named Robson Street because
Councilor Robson
was chair of the housing committee of
Billingham Urban District Council
now
Ricker's dad
one of William's sons
much written elsewhere
married Elizabeth Bessie Ord
one of the daughters of
John Ord Sir Arthur Dorman's estate manager
slightly posh couple looking for a starter home
slight diversion here
1878 - 1890
Linthorpe, Middlesbrough
Linthorpe Art Pottery
many of the early wares have the signature
Christopher Dresser
that is, impressed into the clay
Linthorpe is an inner-suburb and former village
in the unitary authority of Middlesbrough
in the ceremonial county of
North Yorkshire
botable people...
Bob Mortimer comedian
Chris Rea singer
born there into the family who ran
Rea's ices - ice cream shops
Jerry Desmonde actor we have never heard of
Marion Coates Hanson
women's sufferage - votes for women
campaigner
lived there until 1911
Christopher Dresser born Glasgow
1855 professor of artistic botany
in SOuth Kensington,London
1879 - 1882
he was superintendent at the
Linthorpe Art Pottery
and there designe over a thousand pots
he also worked for
Minton, Royal Worcester, Watcombe
Old Hall, and Hanley and Ault
wallpaper, all sorts
we will get to the point
back from the war with his new wife
Tommy Wopson wants to set up home
since he is working for Hodsmans in Albert Road, Middlesbrough
Hodsmans had
whacking great quarries and slag heaps all over
but they rented a floor in the old
Prudential Building
in Albert Road, Middlesbrough
so they are in the records as being
Middlesbrough Company
a stock exchange listed, Middlesbrough company
because they had no other
registered address
and so Tommy foresakes Haverton Hill and
buys a house in
Haymore Street, Linthorpe, Middlesbrough
and at the time it was mainly
a 'stones throw from the south edge of
Albert Park
now it's mainly a stones throw from
Grove Hill
anyway
people have a vision of urban development
they see people getting affluent and
moving out to the suburbs
social development in North East England
is not like that
consider
Grainger Town, Newcastle upon Tyne
between 1824 and 1841 Richard Grainger
built some of Newcastle's finest buildings
Grainger Market, The Theatre Royal,
predominantly 4 storeys
vertical dormers, domes, turrets and spikes
Richard Grainger was said to have
found a Newcastle of bricks and timber
and left one of stone
of Grainger Town's 450 buildings
244 are listed
29 grade 1
49 grade 11 star
Grainger Town is 36 hectares 89 acres
Pevsner described Grey Street as
one of the finest street in England
but the area also contains 13th century relics
in the 1960s and 1970s about a quarter of
Grainger town was demolished
Eldon Square lost a side
to make way for a modern shopping centre
by the 1990s the population had fallen to
1,200
47per cent of those listed building
were also classified as
at risk
everybody gone to
The Metro Centre
everybody being
Sir Philip Green
and all those retailer that have recently
gone bust and disappeared
what we are saying here is
in North East England you have
a half of what you have in London
in London you have
North or the river and
South of the River
you have The East End and the West End
the Grainger Town part of London is
the western part of what is north of the river
but the rest...
is like Manchester or Birmingham
neither Grainger Town
not Middlesbrough
ever had
'little meister' quarters
they didn't start with warrens of little workshops
inhabited by self employed carfters
The North East of England is about
BIG
and the pattern of settlement os the reverse of the norm
you see a map and you see
Middlesbrough surrounded by
Stockton, Darlington and Redcar
and you assume that
these three palces are
dormitary suburbs of the Mighty Middlesbrough
the reverse is true
people owning and working in local industry
at a period in time
sought sophistocated urban living
town parks, the theatre
high class amenities
social contact
Middlesbroug is a dormitary town for
the Tees Valley
Now, now it has a mega hospital and a university
but unless you work there or are a patient or student
Middlesbrough is not for you
Middlesbrough is not
Post Industrial
it is
Post Cultural
people now get their culture off the telly and
on the internet
they don't need
whacking great
cinemas, theatres and department stores
it's not the industrial heartland that is in decline
it's the cultural heartland that is in decline
and it is now a plce to meet
the cultural missionaries of Islam
the mysteries of the orient
that haven't had much to offer in the current
medical crisis

Middlesbrough's current population was estimated to be
140,398 in 2016
by the Office for National Statistics
with a total area of 5,387 hectares
a hectare is an area of land
100 metres by 100 metres
so about the size of an athletics track
or
there are 2 and a half acres in a hectare
Middlesbrough is the smallest and
second most densely populated
local authority area in North East England
however
the population of the
metro area is 387,000
20.58 per cent of the resident population of Middlesbrough are
aged 0 to 15 years
that is slightly higher than the national average but the
North East level is 17.74 per cent
15.9 per cent of residents are over 65
the national rate is 17.88
and North East rate is 19.25
essentially
asylum seekers have settled in Middlesbrough
and are having children
and older people are retring to the
more far flung parts of the
con-urbation
Middlesbrough is the most ethnically diverse local authority area
in the Tees Valley
the British Minority Ethnic population is
11.7 as at the 2011 census
then up by 86 per cent on the
2001 census
88.18 per cent are classed as white
the North East rate is 93.63
79,75 per cent of people in England are classed as white
it is Newcastle upon Tyne that is the one more diverse
authority in the North East
Newcastle 81.92 per cent white
7.78 Asian
1.25 Black/African/Carribean/Black British
1,71 mixed race

8,2 per cent of Mddlesbrough residents were
born outside the UK as at the 2011 census
15.74 of asylum seekers in the North East
are reported to be living in Middlesbrough
as at December 2017
Newcastle upon Tyne has 23.66 per cent of them
and Stockton on Tees has 19.73
7.05 per cent of Middlesbrough residents identified as
Moslem
the North East figure is
1.80 per cent
Middlesbrough is the most
income deprived area in the country

the take away from this is really quite important
the deprived housholds in the Tees Valley
are split between three top tier - unitary - authorities
Stockton on Tees, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland
of these Middlesbrough is
hemmed in by the other two
the other two have the space for
both industrial and commercial development
and
more luxurious and retirement homes
it's like the old saying - Sam, whatever
Sir, sir, we've got a case of Berriberri
oh give it to the Marines
they'll drink anything
we've got some low grade people
send them to Middlesbrough
they'll fit right in there
birds of a feather
flock together
a vicious circle
a self fullfilling prophecy
Middlesbrough doesn't make people poor
people leave Middlesbrough when
they are no longer poor
However, the fundamental is that
people come to Middlesbrough because they
see it as a place of safety
not because they see it as a place of opportunity

95.5 per cent of people living in
Redcar and Cleveland
were born in England
1.6 per cent were born in Scotland
0.3 in Wales, 0.3 in Northern Ireland
0.2 in Ireland
0.1 in South Africa
0.1 in each of Pakistan, India, Australia, United States
leaving 0.16 having been born elsewhere
of which 0,8 - EU country other than Ireland
99.3 per cent of people living in Redcar and Cleveland
speak Ehglish
0.10 per centspeak Polish
0.6 per cent speak something else
0,4 per cent identfy as Moslem
0.1 per cent identify as Bubbhist
46.9 per cent of Redcar and Cleveland residents are
married
Two local authorites side by side with
very different levels of ethnic diversity
but Middlesbrough's ethnic diversity is relatively recent
Social Grade
is a classification based on occupation
Redcar and Cleveland
AB 13.32 per cent England 22.96
C1 26.33 England 30.92
C2 25.33 England 20.64
DE 35.25 England 25.49
education
people in Redcar and Cleveland with
no qualifications...
28.4 per cent England 22.5
Level 1 13.5 England 13.3
level 2 16.4 England 15.2
Apprenticeship 5.7 England 3.6
Level 3 13.1 England 12.4
level 4 18.9 England 27.4
other 3.9 England 5.7

these are self reported cencus data
and so they almost certainly include
people beyond working age
at some level it can be said that people in
Redcar and Cleveland see themselves as
having poorer health than the England average
but
it isn't by much
Very good health 42.38 England 47.17
very bad health 1.79 England 1.25
we have some figures for benefits but we know that
everybody in Redcar and Cleveland is
either on Universal Credt or not on benefits
so Job Seekers Allowance 5.9 per cent England 3.3
Incapacity benefit 3 per cent England 2.4
Any benefit including in work benefits
20.4 per cent England 13.5
these must be somewhat out of date
but the stand out is
the in work benefits level
it is interesting that an area so famous for its
heavy industry
has a level of incapacity benefit
so near to the national average
3 versus 2.4
in terms of age there is a slight bias towards
the 45 to 84 age band
but nothing exceptional
perhaps indicating moving from the urban to the suburban
with a little maturity
and here's the clue
tenure of home
owned R&C 33.2 England 30.6
mortgage 33.4 England 32.8
shared 0.4 England 0.8
Social rented(council) 10.1 England 9.4
Social rented housing association 9.3 England 8.3
private rented 11.2 England 15.4
other 1.2 E 1.4
rent free 1.1 E 1.3
when people buy they do so in the suburbs
to have two thirds of residents having or having had
a mortgage
speaks to quite a lot of
stable empolyment
if not highly paid employment
and also to a tradition of skills and knowledge being
acquired on the job and
not certified by educational establishments
for instance
we are not clear that a whole range of
licences
from driving to diving and to running a pub or post office
are included in the
educational attainment stats quoted above

it's becoming more and more difficult to
remain calm about this
Middlesbrough problem
Middlesbrough - there's nothing there
everything on Teesside is
either in Redcar and Cleveland
or in Stockton-on-Tees
but it still has to be
'near Middlesbrough'
or
'on the outskirts of Middlesbrough'
its like
The Houses of Parliament are
near Trafalgar Square
or
on the outskirts of Chelsea
we do remember
Stockton-on-Tees
is not
Stockton-on-the-Forest
Stockton-0n-the-Forest IS
on the outskirts of York
little place nesr big place
not big place nar little place
little place with a football stadium
and Stockton-on-Teme
is near Kidderminster and hardly exists at all
likewise
Forest-in-Teesdale
a kind of rule of thumb...
a place can be IN a valley or dale
Teesdale
The Tees Valley
but it can't be in a river or the sea
Marske-by-the-Sea
saltburn-by-the-Sea
a town can be
beside the sea side
or on a riverside
all of which matters little
it's very reminiscent of
that singer guy who changed his name to
Cliff Richard
so interviewers would addresshim as
Cliff Richards
and he would spin out a double or tripple name check
by correcting them

we said we would have something to say about
Coatham Beach on 15th Feb
firstly we have one of those
is your sat nav faulty items
The first thing we would say is that the
HGVs turn left sign seems to have gone from the
head of Station Road
a bit confusing for LGV drivers who are
nothing to do with the Regent Cinema development
the satnav thing is related to the
recommended route to site
assuming you are arriving via the A66...
Trunk Road up to
the left turn at the lights
the left turn between
Drive Vauxhall and Locke Park
the one with the sign diresting you to the
Sea Front
after the left turn, over the railbridge
down the other side
straight on at the roundabout
you are on Majuba Road
it curves right at the golf club
and takes you to a T junction with
Newcommen Terrace
Newcommen Terrace is the extension of the Esplanande
like that where you want to be
not Coatham Road
or Corporation Road
and certainly not
digging out the potholes on
Westdyke Road

but to the thing we know that you don't seem to know
not much experience of
Marine Works?
the weather presenters have not mentioned this
some of them will know
what has this past week been?
a spring tide
not spring as in Winter Spring and Summer
a spring as in a bed spring
five and a half metre tide height
washes the sand off the beach
entirely as predicted in yer tide tables
oo err we ain't got tide tables in our sat nav
join the fuckwits who get
stranded on the Holy Island Causeway
the men who built on shifting sands

11th February 2021

an English writer popularised the concept of
the geostationary satellite in the 1940s
Harold Rosen
an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company
invented the first geosynchronous satellite
Syncom2, launched in July 1963
you could say
if the author hadn't thought up the
communications satellite
eventually somebody else would have
always the ready put down for
a clever person you don't like
The author was born in 1917
but he moved to Ceylon - now called Sri Lanka
in 1956
he never left there and died there in around 2008
although the internet does not depend on satellites
there are lots of sub-sea cables
satellites matter a lot
some circle the earth
some - these geostationary ones - chase it around earth's orbit
moving with the earth to stay above the same spot all the time
we are now in the grip of a storm of
internet based mis-information and hate speech
to what extent is that author responsible for that?
the question is interesting because
the author wrote
2001 - A Space Odyssey
and the reason he moved to Ceylon was
remember Elon Musk and the cave rescue defamation case/
the author moved to Ceylon because he
liked little boys
and ecause he liked little boys in 1956
he felt safer in Ceylon than in the UK
what is interesting is that
in 1989 he was made CBE
the ascending ranks are
MBE, OBE, CBE
and in 1998 he was awarded a UK knighthood
he was
Sir Arthur C. Clarke
and so the role of
the democratising effect of the internet
once you have universal internet access
scum of the earth child abusers can
point to
famous people who liked little boys and say
I killed my kid but I never took his picture
I ensured that he qualified for a white coffin
because I preserved his innnocence
and got him out of this place in
double quick time
it is up to
mainstream media to put incidents into perspective
morons will pay good money to read that
heroes have feet of clay
this refers back to
ex UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown saying
this is the end of
Boom and Bust
the liberalisation of attitudes to sex
in the 1960s may have been expected to
encounter a backlash
but it is important to recognise when is a backlash
the result of a flaw in a new system
and when is it just the response of the
creatures- the filth - who have had their
protective rocks
upturned?
there is a line of thought that
men who like little boys
like them in the same way that
women like little boys
that these men are
trans
would have lived out happy and constructive lives as
school matrons
caring for the boys and perhaps introducing them to
The Joys of Sex
it is always assumed that a pedarast
is hell bent on rape
no consideration is given to the idea that he she
may just be aching to give the little chap
his first hand job
or some head
all dispassionate analysis is swept aside
in a flurry of
displacement activity
distrating from a total lack of
real parenting skills

imagine Arthur C Clarke as
Mrs Doubtfire
a Robin Williams character?

10th February 2021

we know something the Regent builders don't seem to know
we'll tell you about it on Monday
we suggest
quite the spectacle on Sunday and Monday morning 4 and 15 Feb
on Coatham beach
if you think Bob the Builder is an object of fun

we like
The Architecture the Railways Gave Us
another source of amusement for 'locals' everywhere no doubt
and so
a segment on
The Causey Arch
of heritage and tourist interest
near Beamish Open Air Museum
you hear of...?
The Durham Coal Fields
The Causy Arch was a part of a wagon way
from a pit in County Durham to The River Tyne
in the programme
the term
Coals to Newcastle
refers to the same things as
selling sand to the Arabs
in the programme there is reference to the
that would get coal from the Durham coal fields
to Newcastle-upon-Tyne
BY RAIL
the cold hard fact of the matter is that
The Causy Arch was a part of a horsedrawn wagonway
taking coal from a pit in County Durham to
Dunston Staithes
in Gateshead. in County Durham
on the river Tyne
nothing whatsoever to do with
Newcastle or Northumberland
coal? Newcastle? no idea
Newcastle, Armstrong
big guns
that's the thing
of course Durham did sell coals to Newcastle

this is the thing about
teachers in school when the
kids are off or home schooling
teachers expect pupils to do homework at home
but then they have
homework clubs
they stop having
homework that's done at home
this entire ecosystem of
educational employers preferentially hiring
people who need sanctury from home
in the eduction sector
and the kids with supportive parents are
the outsiders
the neglected
having supportive parents becomes
cheating
something to be
a source of
discounts
in marking and assessment schemes
if you is Asian
you can do GCSE maths at age 9
but not if you are
one of the hated 95 per cent

8th February 2021

good to see the the next generation taking over the reins
Pabbles and Bambam
taken over from
Flintstone and Rubble
building the new Regent Cinema
denied the traditional opportunity to
go clarts plodging
they have decided to dispense with the
coffre dam
and do
wave dodging construction
very entertaining
keeps endless morons off the streets

many people will be familiar with the saying
schools are great places
except when the kids are there
we've been watching the
Womens' Aid
advert
we have to change our point of view about
domestic violence
all these teachers who
would rather be in school than at home
we have always looked into the Sacred Heart car park and asked
ain't these teachers got no homes to go to?

not much less than a year ago we published an idea
about CoViD treatment that was
at best confusing if not flat wrong
we always try to give the best possible advice
and so we are here to correct the error
we were trying to suggest that the lungs could be cleared
rather than by suction through the throat
by a drain through the chest of a major
airway in the lung
we were referring to a small number of
patients in extremis
what we were not advocating was the ancient practice of
delibertely deflating one of the lungs to give it a rest
allow it some time to heal itself whilst out of action
we do not support that theory
we were thinking along the lines that
since the 'flu an TB
influenze and tuberculosis epidemics of
a century ago
we have developed, and made routine
techniques of
open heart surgery
and we werre suggesting the development of
parallel techniques of
open lung surgery
we routinely remove sections and lobes of lungs
as cancer surgery
and so the development we had in mind is not
outstandingly innovative
what we were against
and we see is not happening
is the idea that we could
sacrifice one lung by allowing the other to drain into it
as would occur with
putting the patient into the recovery position
as opposed to
proneing the patient
proning improve drainage from both lungs
it does not drain one lung into the other

we don't know how to spell
Roody Julianie
he is a Trump associate and
former mayor of New York
we know he wanted to sell of parks and open spaces in New York
to property developers
we assume that he had expected that by now
President Trump would have sold him
Central Park
he must be very disappointed that
President Trump
delivered so little for the
Property Developers of New York
and America
we have a related comment
people may associate the Trump Base
with sentiments such as
if you like it, put a ring on it
and Sleepy Joe has made reference to
family values
there is a fault here
a fault of public perception of what this means
and a bigger fult in the
actual concept
The Pioneers took an allocation of land
and they raised a large family on their plot
they raised a large family as a
captive workforce
but they wer only thinking through their own lifespan
there is a saying
live as though you will die tomorrow
farm as though you will live for ever
if you have a plot of land that supports
mom and pop and ten kids
will it support mom and pop and ten kids and fifty grandkids?
the call of and family values
is not a call for
reproductive 'faithfullness'
it is a call for support for the con cept of
dynasty
if you are a settler you want to breed your own workforce
so you have a dozen kids
soon you realise that you need
a disposable workforce
a workforce who are or are not entitled to wages
but who are not a share of the farm or the factory
come the day you pop your clogs
and the intermediate stage is?
a distinction betwwen
ligitimate and illigitimate offspring
and to narrow it down even further the concept of
(male) premageniture
everything you have goes to
your eldets son
or your
eldest child
it is the only way to
hold a significant dynasty together
so being faithfull to your wife
does not serve your purposes
you have to stick to the
heir and spare
and even then what do you do with
Prince Andrew, Prince Ginner, whatever...
dynasty sucks
what a society with due consideration for
female emancipation says is
girls, get yourselves a dose of
the most impressive man
you can get your hands on
you and your chld
a two person army against the world
or possible a three person army
so they give Wales to Charlie Boy
and he takes it rather too seriously
and Yorkshire to Andrew
Duke of York
and he can't even be arsed to get
married in York Minster
and now they want ot give
Scotland to
Edward Prince of Frimley Park
surprised they didn't give Ann the Isle of Wight
population of England around 70 million
popoualtion of London around 9 million
population of Wales around 3 million
population of Scotland around 5 million

5th February 2021

now that things CoViD are beginning to
calm down a bit
we want to return to an issue we have mentioned before
the issue of
barrier nursing
versus
reverse barrier nursing
essentially these can be either way around by convention but
what we are talking about is versus
the boy in the bubble
all along in the current epidemic the idea has been
in the UK
to leave the patient exposed
and protect or cocoon the attendants
two mechanical devices are not in evidence
first the conscious patient could be
in a bed in a tent
a transparent walled tent - proper barrier nursing
with their exhailed air vented to sanitation facilities
just as the boy in the bubble - the boy with
no immune system - pre bone marrow transplant
was kept in an envelope of
sterile air
and in 'modern' operating theatres
the opperating table is
held within a curtain of sterile air
the second device missing is the
spit
the over sensitive Americans may call it a
rotisary
essentially a means to
prone unconscious patients without human effort
some sort of
stereotactic frame attached to the patient
pins bearing on bones
attached to a motor to turn the patient

4th February 2021

gone back to whacka mole
broken the new kit or only brought it for show?

this is what we saw of the
government epidemiology graphic

The government of the UK have published a complex graph of
CoViD 19 effects
if wrconcentrate on the outcomes for the
under 50s...
we are seeing few deaths
the split between genders in terms of
went to hospital but left healthy
in the 40 to 50 cohort
men are more likely to go to hospital than women
in the 15 to 40 bracket, women are more likely to
go to hospital
in the 50 to 80 bracket
men are more likely to go to hospital
we have a suggestion for this pattern
two in fact
the suggestion for men is that
this is a respiratory infection and
men - especially the over 50s - will have
smoked more than women
and so to the young women falling foul..
have you ever heard of a
dad
eating up the children's left overs?
these younger women finding themselves in hospital
are likely
overweight

1st February 2021

it is a bit of a stretch from
corona virus to ecology you may think
it isn't about what the virus is or
its effects
it's about how it is transmitted and
more importantly
how people react to the concept
the behaviour of the people most at risk is
paralleled by the
behaviour of
nesting seabirds
lots of people have written theses - plural of thesis
for their Ph.D. on the social behaviour of
nesting seabirds
and the founder of this line of work is
Tinbergen
there are probably other places to observe this but
for our purposes
kittywakes and ganets
nesting on the cliffs of the
Farne Islands
is the pearl
and the Farne Islands feature
Lindisfarne
and they are in the North Sea
off
Northumberland, England
there are few, limited ledges on the cliffs
and space is tight
the nest
rock wall behind
void in front
neighbours left and right
the colony would die out if
neighbours got so heated in their disputes
that they fling each other and
more importantly eggs and chicks into that void
so they have evolved a sort of avian version of
passive agressive behaviour
instead of going at each other with their beaks or bills
they furiously tend the edges of their nests
there is an old song
probably
History of the Bonzos
my pink half of the drain pipe
keeps me safe from YOU
and this is called
displacement behaviour
so two things to research
displacement behaviour and Tinbergen
and
displacement behaviour
shades into
factitious behaviour
I feel threatened, bewildered, and powerless to
deal with this situation as I would wish
so I create a diversion or I
make a mountain out of a mole hill
or in Biblical terms
I rail about the moat in my neighbours eye
whilst ignoring the
plank
in my own
and in modern social terms
I rail against my neighbour's child
having sex a little before the age of consent
or even
the existence of
photographs of my neighbours child
whilst
I shorten my child's life by
being their feeder
and raising them to be one of the
70 percent of Middlesbrough residents who are
overweight or clinically obese
there is one main characterstic of the
whinge meisters
they never say
you gave me ten, I should have had five
they say
you gave me ten, it's an outrage

talking about supermarkets in Redcar
Aldi, ASDA, Tesco
each in their own way have at present
ASDA, Aldi, Poundstretcher, always
two customer doors
one entrance
the other
exit
seems sensible, in the circumstances
Morrisons?
two doors
one locked
the other
both entrance and exit
the logic is not so immediately clear

a few more Regent Pictures on a quiet day

and it has been pointed out
the sheet piling may be
cut off below the sand rather than removed
we shall see

29th January 2021

there are two sorts of piles
being installed at
The Regent Site
on Coatham Beach
they are wacking in the sheet piling to form
a coffre dam within whch to work
these are not permanent
the bigger machine is just shoving the
permanent pipe piles that will be the
foundations of the new building

we have update pictires from
The Mighty Redcar Wall

28th January 2021

we found some coin to put in the meter
very complicated
it does lead some to think....
is the reason the UK
didn't have lockdowns
and school closures
when advised by the scientists was
that the Victims Commissioner
advised that lock downs would lead to
mass murder amongst
women and children?

we should say...
if you go to the government corona virus website
and type in a post code that is in
North Lakes
North Lakes is not a council ward
but it's Newcomen and surrounding areas
if you type that sort of post code in
you could be forgiven for thinking that
all of Redcar and Cleveland's positive tests are
happening in that area
fret not
'we' are doin' an experiment
as from
25th January
the council are offering all commers
lateral flow tests at the
Leisure Centre part of the Community Heart
and we are assuming these test results are being added to
the NHS symptomatic positives
so Redcar will lag a bit
at present Redcar is showing around twice the positives
of surrounding areas
so that gives some idea of
asymptomatic spread
not 'all commers'
only people without symptoms should attend
if you have symptoms you should do the normal
and get into the NHS system direct

these are lateral flow, almost instant - 15 minute, tests
intended for key workers

27th January 2021

we have been considering
how would this have been with a
Corbyn government
we assume some extra
business and benefit support but
we assume emphasis in
enhanced benefits rather than business support
we doubt there would have been so much
refuge in science
now that
Tweedledum
has made his exit stage left...
Tweedledee is exposed in the spotlight
trousers around his ankles
and some consideration of
the fake news concept seems in order
and here we are not so much referring to
dismissing news as fake
we are considering the generation of
actual fake stories
these days this is referred to as
factitious disorder
it used to be called
Munchausen syndrome
or
Munchausen's by proxy
to modernise it you could call it
Dan Johnson syndrome
or refer to that creature
in the early morning slot on
the BBC's early morning slot on their
24 hour news service
Dan Johnson is the sort of reporter you files
thousands assumed dead in California wildfires
when thousands have been evacuated to escape the fire
and so to turn to the convicted
we on the receiving end assume that
there is an editorial meeting at which a news organisation
decides the story of the day
this is hangover from the days of
a front page headline
broadcast media don't have a front page but
lacking innovative spark
they substitute a
running order
with only the one slot
and at the daily editorial briefing the editors
say to the hacks
this is today's story
go compete for the
number one angle on the theme
compete for the number one slot in
a running order confined to the one topic
so you don't have stories competing for
places in the running order
you have
angles
competing for places in the running order
without ourselves going into detail about the
angles explored
let us consider the case of
Beverley Allitt
the two major angles were
child-killing nurse
police vendetta against
angel of mercy
we alway remind people about the movie
Ace in a Hole
where a washed up hack keeps a
mining disater 'going' playing for time to
get national syndication
with tragic results
we are in lock down three in the UK
and the question is
how sick - metally ill - are the people who
are still prophesising
'when lock down ends'
we will go into thousands of houses
and discover thousands of
slaughtered women and children'
but, dear reader, we have alredy
come out of lockdown twice
and it didn't happen

there is a line between
being the
boy who cried Wolf!
and the girl who
enticed the wolf with a trail for snacks
the boy who cried wolf
looses credibility
the girl with the food parcels
invites disaster
we will divert here to point out the difference between
illness anxiety disorder
and
factitious disorder
people with llness anxiety disorder are
sometimes referred to as
the worried well
people with factitious disorder
always want to be sick
in one of her two years as a student nurse
Beverly Allitt had
166 sick days
and so it is not just a case of
simple attention seeking
it is desperate need to be ill
or as developed with her
a need to be in the presence of
sickness related drama
Ricker was aware at Durham of a
post grad who
got an extra year - 4 instead or 3 - to complete his
Ph.D. thesis because he broke his leg
Allitt failed the 11 plus and her sister passed
being ill as cover for failure can
become a habit
so excuse for failure surpasses
attention seeking
it's a kind of
'the dog ate my homework' concept
I can't write because of my crutches
if it were
I can't collect minibeasts from the bog I'm studying
that has ligitimacy
but
I cn't write my thesis because
there's a woman down our street who
may one day be beaten up by her partner...
that is not ligitimate
and so to
Vera Baird
some time MP for Redcar
I can't defend local industry because
men are bigger than women

25th January 2021

like it or not
our Ricker is what you got
he knows what he has got and
he does not want to be seen as
projecting his problems onto everybody else
what Ricker has is GBS
we will quote from
well we think it's
casereports.bmj.com
but we could be wrong
in the spectrum of neurologic manifestations
of COVID=19, Guillain-Barre syndrome GBS
should be considered in patients with
peripheral nervous system symptoms
Early recogntion and treatment of GBS can prevent
potentially serious morbidity and mortality
in patients with COVID-19
end quote
this is disputed by
uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk
this is where the data and the theory can clash
GBS is suspected in the CoViD related infections
it is investigated
the problem is
when you ask
did patients with X appear to have Y
you are not controlling for anything much
we have not read up on recent
Cambridge University findings that
If this is true it is mega important
a Cambridge group have said
patients who die
28 days after an infection with caorona virus
have cleared the virus from their bodies
before they die
is that all such patients or just some?
the point is, in simple terms,
is long CoViD
a form or varient or analogue of GBS?
GBS stops yer limbs from working
a varient may cause you to loose control over the
muscles you use to breathe
we have a question
we see all this PPE - personal protective equipment
deployed n CoViD wards
is anybody testing for the presence of
corona virus in these wards?
are these wards treting these patients on the basis of
road accident victims
where patient and vehicle
patient and virus
have long since been separated
is CoViD
SLOW anaphilaxis?

You remember
The King and I
the king of Siam
or the King of Thailand
we take no responsibility for this quote
Thailand's secretive, playboy king
has a history of
jailing people who insult him holed up in a
luxury hotel in the Bavarian Alps
Thailand has a
Lese-majeste law
that prohibits
insulting defaming or threatening the monarchy
revent demonstrations have lead to many charges
under this law
the Thai language hash tag
Why do we need a king
got 1.2 million responses
Redcar steel works was bought
refurbished and run by SSI
Thai based
Sahaviriya Steel Industries
here's the thing
Thai attitudes towards Royalty are different
from UK attitudes
if the
Thai government got to hear that
The Prince of Wales wanted
in a
who will rid my Principality of this proud
steelmaking rival, way
Redcar shut
Redcar would be shut
it don't belong to anybody Thai now
it doesn't need to be shut

Charlie Boy, get yer ears on
tell 'em to stop being so bloody silly

22nd January 2021

22nd January 2021

a lttle consideration of Wales
we found some Government of Wales
census stats
in 1931
the bulk of the population split
four fairly equal quarters aged
0 to 14 at school or younger 26.6 percent
15 to 29 ......................24.8 percent
30 to 44 ......................21.0 percent
45 to 64 ......................20.8 percent
aged over 65....................6.8 percent

in the 2019 census
this is not the ten year census
16.8 under 15
18.5 15 to 29
17.4 30 to 44
26.3 45 to 64
11.5 65 to 74
9.5 0ver 75
young children and the parents of young children are
down from half the population to
around a third
almost a quarter of the present population are over retirement age
and within the next ten years
it will be more like half
add the under 18s
three million population
a workforce of
16.8 + 18.5 +17.4 = 52.7 percent
without emmigration
2030 workforce in Wales one and a half million
pre-CoViD the unemployment rate in Wales was
2.5 per cent
now 5 per cent
pre-covid there were
37,500 unemployed in Wales - approx
a billion pounds worth of investment to stop that
reaching 40,000?
half of them would be female, yes

employers in Wales
Admiral Insurance - ailing a bit
Wales exports goods and services
we assume that this list is in order of
decresing value - biggest earner first
but we are taking this from journalists who
can't abide a list
Aerospace Industries
Business and Financial Services That is the likes of Admiral
Cereals - food
Chemical products
Dairy products
Electricity
Electronics
and then
Iron and Steel
and then all sorts of manufactures
There are big companies the like of
Admiral Insurance in Cardiff
and the company they pushed aside as top employer is
Iceland Foods
and little businesses in the
Swansea Bay area
the main industries are
Agriculture
Aerospace
Construction
Electronics
Emergency Services
we think
we very much think that
something is very very obviously
missing
and we note that Cardiff is
just over the water from
Weston-Super-Mare
Wales
and in particular South Wales
has vast
tourist potential
and no tourist industry to speak of
and why?
who the hell wants to hoiday in
steel works smog
ther are no many young people in Wales
but tourism provides the sort of
entry level jobs that would
keep them at home
perhaps Aerospace will recover
from the CoViD drop in
Airbus orders

it is quite clear that schools in Wales
make an effort to ensure that chldren
living there can speak and understand Welsh
a sort of anti-Esperanto language
the question we would like to ask is
of the people living in Wales
how many who cannot speak or understand English
speak and understand Welsh?

we looked up some political data on Wales
two parliaments for Wales
Cardiff and Westminster
in the Cardiff Assembly
Labour 28 Tory 11
at Westminster representing Wales
Labour 22 Tory 14
ll but one way up north of the
Labour Westminster MPs representing Wales
represent constituencies on the
South Wales coast near Port Talbot
The Tories represent east Wales and the
nationalists - there are three - represent West Wales
here is the economic scenario
population of wales 3.1 - three point one - million
around 77 thousand constituents per MP
that is average to high
but if you look at the land area covered
Welsh labour MPs have very small constituencies
they rely on very dense populations
close to industry
if jobs moved from South Wales to other countries
including England
there would be pressure to
reduce the number of constituencies in South Wales
and only the Labour Party would feel the direct effects
when SSI in Redcar folded
it was clear that the reason given was that
they had to sell the steel on world markets
and world market prices were disasterously low
10th May 2013
Prince Charles - Prince of Wales
make that 24th October 2011
2 visits to Redcar blast furnace
on one occasion...
Prince Charles visited the steel plant
ahead of the furnace being re-started
in December
the first of these visits was at the
Tata Closure
the second at the
SSI re-opening
it was during this shut down that
the direct coal injection plant was added
essentially
Redcar Blast furnace was
completely re-built for a 2013 re-start
and shut down around three years later
it is almost new
and so
three steel works equals overcapacity
close the newest most efficent one
now
your late grandad's almost new car is
standing in the garage
and your daily driver has
failed its MOT
so you?
Buy another car
Redcar was only stood down because of
overcapacity
let's spend half a billion on an new one in South Wales
and if it's government funded that will rise to
the whole billion
which would harm Labour and help the Tories most
South Wales depopulation due to
de-industrialisation
or
the building of
more over-capacity in South Wales
we seem to have a
pro-Labour government
further evidenced by their recently
doing the bidding of a former Labour leader
regarding vaccination spacing

21st January 2021

we have a quote about
Redcar British Steel railway station
opened on 19 June 1978
Northern discontinued service to the station in
December 2019 prior to this the station
owned by Network Rail
was surrounded by private land
which prevented any public access to or from the station
end quote
that is a core problem
it is a bit of an
Emporor's new clothes thing
tight security
protecting a whole load of nothing
discourages investment
so far as can be seen
the 'development corporation' has concentrated on
defending and expanding its boundaries
not on welcoming potential developers
the policy seems like
a landowner that owns a listed building that includes
fabulous ornate stables
and
seeks plannng permission to install
hundreds and thousands of
bike racks
on the site
the difficulty being that London 'experts'
cut and paste plans for converting
The Pool of London
docks into a tourist attraction
Bankside power station to Tate Modern
onto an area that does not have the footfall
we won't dig out the company name but
Redcar steel 'smelter' at one time supplied most of its steel to
a company in Italy
that company makes all sorts of little things
kettles and toasters and such
they switched to importing steel from China
they say the great thing about
beating your head against a brick wall
or football
is when you stop
if you don't travel along the
extension of the A66 that is termed the
A1085
you probably don't know the extent to which
Redcar is
Industrial
not post-industrial
in particular
Redcar 'imports' slab steel from??
Scunthorpe?
and it's huge mills at Lackenby
process it
in that sense
Redcar is treating Scunthorpe buy in nice clean steel
and have no more to do with that nasty, dirty coal
politicians will always try to work an angle
Corona Virus has had no impact on
heavy or primary industry
BUT
politicians in SOuth Wales are attempting to get
to divert
CoViD recovery money
to prop up Port Talbot steel works
the information that we have
is that as at 30 January 2019
the more recently refurbished blast furnace in
Port Talbot
has a life expectancy of
5 to 7 years
we suspect that having spent tens of millions on it
at that time
the 500 million pounds that Tata are asking
the UK government for
is to build one or two
entirely new coal fired blast furnaces in South Wales
for completion in around 2025
and they take two years to build
Redcar is ready to go with
post fossil iron smelting
the tension is between
a Tees Valley mayoral election in May 2021
and holding out for the demise of Port Talbot in
2025
it is obvious that
the balance of opinion is that
Port Talbot should
go electric arc
by 2025
at whch point the only point of discussion is
should primary steel production in the UK
steel from iron ore
be split between
Scunthorpe and Redcar
or should either be chosen for
an integrated steel industry
based on non-fossil carbon
Redcar has the mothballed kit
Scunthorpe has not

20th January 2021

to clarify here
at present Vauxhall presently employ
1,000 at Elsmere Port assembling vehicles and
want to switch to electric vehicles
a company wanting to switch to electric vehicles
would have their site of assembly influenced if there was
a local supply of steel
made using non-fossil carbon
as Redcar could do without any significant investment
we try to walk a line between being
entertaining
and
humerous
we feel that as soon as we crack a Sam
we will loose credibility
at the same time we recognise that we do not have
a static readership
and so we do allow ourselves to repeat ourselves
on occasion
we keep hearing tht the powers that be believe that the
1970s Redcar Ironworks - blast furnace - must be demolished
in order to attract newer cleaner industry
this in part is a mistake
we hve no idea to what extent over the years the politicians have sapared
a couple of minutes to check out what is there we have said before
in the 1970s it was proposed that
ALL IRON SMELTING IN THE UK
wouldoccur in future in Redcar
and plans were made for three
blast furnaces
each with a capacity of at least
3 million tonnes of iron a year
the one that got built was the one nearest Redcar
the east blast
the foundations for the other two are there to be seen
running parallel
these were to be
BLAST FURNACES
blast furnaces need a blast to offer
that is not the deployment of explosives
this is the employment of
bloody great big
FANS
compressors
world class blowers
and
when the blast was running....
Redcar was almost as noisy as an airport
here's the thing
if the bosses took the trouble to
poke their heads into
the TURBINE HALL
they would see that
at the point at which the politicians
cut the project to save
Scunthorpe and Port Talbot
three THREE turbine compressors
had been installed
one for each blast furnace
as is the way with these things
of course the politicians had had to
spread the work around the country and so
each was made by a different company
in a different works
here's the kicker
when SSI introduced
direct coal injection
a second turbine was commissioned
as at mothballing five years ago
number one turbine was
providing the blast to the furnace
and number two turbine was providing
the blast for the direct coal injection plant
number 2 had been never used and mothballed sice 1979
there is absolutely
NO NEED
scrap kit that could find a use
kit that could find a use
does not include coke ovens

perhaps you would like to check the following
Ford don't make car in the UK
they make diesel engines
and nothing else
in Dagnham, Essex
they do employ thousands of design engineers in the UK
a company called Stellantis
own vauxhall
and produced some sort of press release recently saying
they may consider making electric cars in the UK
but at present they don't make Vauxhalls or Opels in the UK
or anything else for that matter
Honda are in Swindon
and they will close in this year 2021
Renault Nissan make
7,000 cars a year in Washington, Tyne and Wear
Sunderland
and 80 per cent of them are exported
since the UK got a BrExit deal
they have been very quiet
Tort Talbot Steel is rolled in South Wales and
made into cars by Honda in Swindon
when Honda Swindon closes
the UK government will be expected to export Port Talbot steel
at ther expense
if the BrExit deal allows it
otherwise port Talbot wll close
and Renault Nissan may rather like to get their steel from
Lackenby Mills in Redcar
and Lackenby Mills may quite like to get their steel from
Redcar Steelworks

18th January 2021

we swore off publishing unemployment stats
but we have a snippet
we know a lot of people don't figure here
because they are not working but they are being paid
by the government
the picture is not entirely bleak
and on that note

This is the December 2020 condition of
the wall against many of the interviews in
The Mighty Redcar
were recorded

today we saw another
UK Prime Minister interview where he
how shall we say it
gave a somewhat out of date answer to a
routine question
by which we mean a question designed to
give him the opportunity to re-inforce current advice
and he gave a reprise of outdated advice
there are several forms of memory loss
Peter Falk died with memory loss
he was the actor who played
'just one last thing'
detective, Columbo
he died long after completely loosing any memory of
ever having been an actor let alone, Columbo
and jackie Charlton appears to have forgotten all about
football, quite some time before he died
there was a young lad who participated fully in this past Chrismas
but due to CoViD now has no recollection of it at all
in some sense we can divide memories into three types
short, medium, and long term
a very long time ago there was a public information film
about how to use a Pelican crossing
PeLiCon - Pedestrian, Light Controlled roadway crossing
two characters
a little kid and an old bloke
kid makes to cross the road without recourse to the crossing
bloke pulls him back and explains how to use the crossing
including shepherding the boy across the road
was this Deryck Guyler? - the voice over
the thing is at the beginning the bloke hangs his umberella
on the crossing button box
as they reach the other side
it starts to rain
and the closing or punch line is
Oh, wish I'd brought me brolly
that's yer
absent minded professor, memory loss
that would never happen to a woman with their
famed capacity for
mulit-tasking
make your own mind up about that
and so the third type of memory loss
entering
ROM status
havng a Read only memory
remembering things but not being able to
create new memories
and that takes two forms
complete inability to make new memories
and
loss of the ability to overwrite old memories
in the PMs case
he can't overwrite
norovirus suppression advice
with
Corona virus suppression advice
he may, however, retain the ability to
master a new technology such as zoom
we talk about such people as having
a fixed idea about a particular topic
despite themselves - having accepted the change
but then forgotten the change
there is also a hierachy of imperatives in memories
say you have guests
say you decide to
nip upstairs to
1 fetch a photo album from a bedroom wardrobe
2 get a wee
get the album first
because if you get the wee - higher priority mission
you may froget about the album

we put these little factoids out there
from time to time
this is more an idea than a fact
a little while ago we mentioned that
one of the vicars of Coatham was
Rev Allan Wordsorth
and that his middle son was called Allan
and that is an unusual spelling of Alan
and there may be a better explanation out there but
poet William Wordsworth lived in three homes in the Lake District
he had some negative things to say about the second one
the chimney didn't draw
the fire smoked the house out
and it was called
Allan Banks
it is called Allan Banks

16th January 2021

Ricker has been locked down for 10 days now
dodging the jobsworths
he expects to be home for at least four or five more days
as so some writing about concepts
we have referred in the past to
Hull University's Four Musketeers
four student house mates
Jack Cohen - embryologist
Mike Jackson - school teacher
Ken Bowler - University lecturer
and a politician
the spluttery one on spitting image
Roy Hattersley
this is the story of
Mike Jackson
it's a story of the law of
unintended consequences
Mike Jackson married a girl from
The Channel Isles
essentially French islands in the English Channel
administered by the British
she was a Roman Catholic and we are talking
1960s and 1970s
so they are young married couple and they have sex and they make babies
they make 4 daughters
that may be seen as
enough
it may be difficult to see how they could afford more children
but she is a Roman Catholic woman in the 1970s
she's not going on
The Pill
so he has the snip - a vasectomy seeing as how he's
not Roman Catholic
Mike is a head of secience
Gllbrook in Eston on Teesside
here's the unintended consequence
every time a new female joins his department
Senor Jackson propositions than with the news that
he's had the snip
and that brings us to one of the teachers he propositioned
we have not remembered her name
she did make it to the gutter press
Probably the News of the World
when she was a little girl
like all little girls??
she was pressed to make a good marriage
and in her circumstances the best rout to that was to
jon a Young Farmers Club
so she married a farmer
and she had a son
and her son was seriously disabled
and we are talking the 1960s in the UK
and farmers are being assailed by the officers of
ADAS
we don't know what that stands for
but it was a government attempt to drag farmers
out of the dark ages
something along the lines of
agricultural development assistance service
but farming family presented with a child with
cerebral palsy or Downs....
say
that doesn't run in our family
you must have been unfaithful
womb on legs, sperm are tiny people, egg makes no
genetic contribution
must be somebody else's kid
divorced and dealing with a disabled son
turns to the church
and the vicar
gives her some
and gets defrocked and into the News of the World
same sort of thing as
The Vicar of Stifky
in a barrel at the end of the pier
that's the thing with farmers
they do something all day and every day
and people defer to their 'expertise'
their empirical mumbo jumbo
oh is that racist?

it's very difficult to find an analogy that
has universal cut through
this one is construction industry derived
in the UK in the 1960s the thing was
DIY
do it yourself
and the prime power tool was the
electric drill
early ones had a lot of add-ons
the main problem was the drill bit
binding in the material being drilled
this would tend towards the drill bit stoppng
and the drill turning
we normally say
drill and drill bit
some people say
drill and drill driver
swapping the names around
because a drill driver suddenly snatching around
could cause harm
almost all electrical drills have provision for a side handle
so that holding the drill can be a two handed job
all very clear
nothing to do with our analogy
as time has gone by
in professional workshops and the home
a second power tool has emerged
the angle grinder
when you drill a hole you want it to be straight
you do different things with an angle grinder
if you peruse a power tool catalogue you will see
drills are depicted as is
angle grinders ALWAYS have the side handle attached
there is a very important reason for this
Is there anybody out there who remembers
Rowan and Martin's Laugh In?
there was this running sketch line
sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me
and one example was
it may be a
chrome vanadium torque driver to you
but it's a
socket to me
angle grinders are used for cut off
and for
dressing
dressing is essentially the smoothing of a
rough welded joint
whilst dressing a component the angle grinder will
be twisted all around in a sort of
metal carving action
when doing this the operator can experience the
grinder suddenly twisting, leaping, in their hands
this has a very significant cause
to you this is an angle grinder
to the universe
this is a
gyroscope
you hold it one way and as a heavy spinning disc
it will resist being twisted
and at a certain point it will leap to another
orientation that it find equivalent to the start position
just becaue you see something in a particular light
does not mean that that is its entire identity

Ricker did make his Christmas blueberry muffins...
Back in the days of the
Bow Street Runners
the police were mainly a deterant to street violence
by the time we get to the days of
Dixon of Dock Green
1960s UK TV series
the police have a detective branch
this detective branch divided into three
1 plain clothes police - detectives
2 crime scenes investigators CSI
3 CPS Crown Prossecution Service
the CPS took over from the police
most aspects of decisions about who to charge with what
police in the 60s had solicitors on the staff
but they did not have to refer cases to an independent body
for assessment before disposing of the matter
in that sense
the police made enquiries - as to fact
in the same sense, consideration of
circumstances fell to the CPS
unfortunately
under Home Office pressure
statistics began to over shadow justice
in a sense the CPS were to be a
permanent professional Grand Jury
in the American sense
their deliberations are supposed to be a
pre-trial hearing
of the evidence collected by the police
we have just had statistics that show - for example - that
the vast majority of children assaulted or killed
as assaulted in their own home - not in care or outside the home
and that almost all child victims of violence are either
under the age of 12 months
or over the age of 16 years
the total number is in the two a week ball-park
in a population of 60 million
the fantasists who live in their own little world
expected CoViD lockdown to inflte that figure into the
hundreds per week
they still 'live in hope' that hundreds and thousands of
battered wives will emerge from lockdown seeking help
thye therefore exert
celebrity pressure on government to do two things
get the charge rate up for familial assault
get the conviction rate up for familial assault
this pressures
police, CPS and courts to
sift through cases, reports of incidents, etc
looking for
cases where convction is likely
cases where one party has a
back story full of pathos -a tragic back story
and the other has not
this is to avoid cases where juries may conclude
six of one and half a dozen of the other
and this is why
police and CPS will do all they can to avoid the stricture on
all other witnesses
to
speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
police evidence tends to be
partial and incomplete
partial in the sense of being
dressed up and edited to promote the best chance of
generating the statistics the Home Office demand
The Home Office motto?
Every trial a shown trial
not the
Department of Justice
but
the Department of Convictions
it is interesting to hear local authorities say that
they are suffering a loss of income
because they are not having so much contact with the public in lockdown
and are suffering a loss of fee income as a result
and having to keep officers employed in a reduced workload
the police CPS etc
have lost sight of being employed by
The Crown or The People
they seek clients
politicians, celebrities, charities or individuals
and seek to achieve a result - a conviction - for their client

15th January 2021

Ricker thinks that somewhere in his
rat's nest
there is a copy of a book called
Mathematics for the intelligent non-mathematician
we thnk of that whenever we add content
we do get quite a bit frustrated by
the Dysnification - anthropomorphisation - of viruses
in that context we have referred to - for example -
a virus being like a sperm without a tail we can throw in words or term for you to folow up
a micelle or micella is an aggragate of
surfactant molecules
dispersed in a liquid
forming a colloidal suspension
a typical micelle in waterforms an agregate with
the water loving, water friendly, hydrophilic ends of the
molecules
on the outside surface of a sphere
and the hydrophobic ends of the melocules
huddled together in the core of the sphere
micelles are formed by self assembly of
amphiphilic molecules
molecules - not life forms
perhaps we will confuse here but
think of
salted butter
the salt is hydrophilic and the butter is hydrophobic
and if salted butter were a molecule
it would be amphiphilic
as in ambidextrous not
ambidextrous means having two right hands
amphiphilic means
more like hermaphrodite
son of Hermes and Aphrodite
having both boy and girl bits
both water loving and water shunning bits or ends
at this point a major diversion
daphnia pulex
common water flea
born pregnant
all such water fleas are female, normally
but in bad conditions - their pond drying up
some will turn male and
eggs rather than live young will be delivered
the main reason is that eggs will survive when
dry as dust
water fleas will not
however, it is in this
sexual form of reproduction
that genetic variation can occur
a flea born from an unfertilised mother will be
a clone of her mother
a flea born of her mother and her mother;s trans sister
is not a clone and
has some prospect of exhibiting genetic variation
partly by being not so
in bred
and partly because the fertilisation process introduces
opportunities for mutation
and so the virus is a micell in the sense that it is
assembled by forces of an electrostatic nature
usually, protein on the outside, nucleic acid on the inside
it's a step up from a micell but only one of two steps up
absolutely NOT in ANY way sentient - capable of
consciousness or thought
regarding those steps up...
another word to be aware of is
flocculation
a process of contact and adhesion
whereby particles of a dispersion
form larger sized clustered
coagulation is the same or similar
they are processes of
chemistry
involving
phase change
essentially, solid out of liquid
the presence of a different chemical can cause
coagulation
for instance
broadly
renet
converting milk into cheese
renet is an enzyme
but an enzyme is a molecule
it is not a little green man wielding a screw gun

we don't like making mistakes
but we do like to correct them
Ricker has had a brain wave
he can't remember what he said about
inquiry versus enquiry
but it was something about
relative seriousness
anyway, as he now points out
the clue is in the difference between
the parallel is the difference between
insure and ensure
we insure against something that
may or may not happen
we ensure that something either does or does not happen
we ensure that we have
locked the doors and windows
we insure against
somebody breaking in
when you ask a 'Enquiries' you are asking somebody who
knows
because you are a person who does not know
in an inquiry
the assumption is that it is a search for
information, conclusions, that noboby knows
or nobody is clear about
at the start of the inquiry
otherwise you would have a
statement
to be the response to enquiries about the matter
you may enquire about the time of day
or whether the latest product is in stock
and get a definitive answer
perhaps the railway companies should have an
inquiries window
so they can put a wet finger in the air to
try to guess when the next train will depart
naturally
police enquiries are
exercises in pure fiction

13th January 2021

we are not clear as to whether
the UK 1872 Infant Life Protection Act
still pertains
we suspect that it will have been subsumed into
later legislation
but you never can tell
without checking
parliament loves new, exciting, game changing legislation
not so keen on spending time on tidying up the pre-existing
however, the crime or problem to which it refers
is so far lost in the mists of time that
its name has been adopted by many including
Wallgreen as Boots
as a trade name or product category
we refer to
child farm and baby farm
and so we are obliquely refering to the
mother and baby/laundry units in Ireland
a report recently published
in 1870 The Times - The Times of London
repoted that it believed...
Our conviction is that babies are murdered in scores,
by these women - baby farmers -
that adoption is only a fine phrase fot slow or sudden death
Ireland's war of independence lasted from
21st Jan 1919 to 11 July 1922
and so that law would have applied at the time it was passed
in Ireland
but was unlikely to have been used against the
Roman Catholic Church
we suspect that some of these children
those in London and other cities
did probably meet an early end
but some would have survived
enslaved to their adoptive parents
we have suspicions that it was the supply of this latter class
that inspired the Roman Church's opposition to
sex education and contraception
we hope that all of this is as much in a the past as the likes of
Boots
seem to think it is
what we witness now is something somewhat different
the exploitation of vulnerable children was become more complex
they are being farmed
we should note that
tribbles are a
Star Treck
invention
they are not so much being farmed for their work in laundries
or households
they are being farmed for the purpose of
virtue signalling
the purist may say that
charity undermines the welfare state
the charitable....
there exist these three
faith, hope and charity
the charitable may say
charities are more agile than government departments
charity?
there exist these three
faith, hope and love
do people give to charities out of love?
or as hush money to pay for the tidying of
something unsightly from public view?
do people give to Cancer Research UK
because cancer is a bad thing
because people suffer from cancer
because the donor hopes to finance 'a cure' before they get it
does that mean they have little faith in government sponsored research?
because they or a loved one has been cured of cancer and they wish
to pay a suppliment over and above the taxes they pay?
the poor will always be with us
well do you compare living standards of today's deprived communities with
those of all but a handful of people in 1872?
all but the landed gentry and royalty
the three estates of UK society are
well they were...
clergy, nobility, commoners
the fourth estate is the
main stream media
the fifth estate is the blogosphere
that's a somewhat 'revolutionary' view
bass of wikileaks movies etc.
alternatively...
the first estate is royalty
the second estate is the nobility
the third estate is the gentry - including
new money such as industrial wealth not based on land ownership
the fourth estate is the clergy
and the fifth estate is the media - all of it
and the establishment of
Methodist style religions
is an artifact of - cause or effect? - the question
gentry or clergy in third place?
in essence because the clergy were not willing to
give place to the gentry
the gentry set up rival religions
you wanna work for us
you come to our church
essentially, the same Bible - the King James Version
but cheaper buildings
even today your typical Methodist chapel is
indistinguishable from a
village hall
but they sing a lot
the very term fifth estate raises suspicions
it sounds a lot like
fifth columnist
in general
fifth columnism is equivalent to entryism
joining a group whose beliefs or cause you oppose
to learn about it or damage it
a famous fifth columnist was
Norway's Quisling
he lead a political party that had never won a seat
but proclaimed himself leader
after the Germans invaded
he was shot at the end of the war
that is legally executed
after a trial

We are supposing that microwave oven have been
around in the UK for about 40 years
and they have a twin in a way in terms of
technology at the service of the masses
a little earlier, we suppose, came
the jet to the sun
package holidays
airline food - we understand - has often been referred to
by cabin crew, as
cuisine a la ting
airline meals have since the beginning of the
mass market phase
been re-heated in on board microwave ovens
the ting referring to the signal that the food is ready for service
it appears to be a part of the modern
Primary Care health check
are you eating well?
do you eat tak aways? fresh fruit and veg will keep for quite a while
depending on storage conditions
but the sort of equipment used to convert
fresh food into ready meals
is no more available in the
modern deprived household
than on an airliner
you can supply a fresh whole carrot to a family
and expect it to stay fresh for a week or two
you can't cut it into batons and expect the same shelf life
processed food - even just skinned or chopped - has to be
packaged in a protective atmosphere to have a reasoable
use by date
a story from the bakery of a local Tesco store
Tesco to some bake in store and some of their stores take in
part baked goods, and finish them in store
so the customer says to the worker
all this bread has today's date on it
can I have a loaf with tomorrow's date on it
sorry you'll have to come back tomorrow for that
there is a reason for this
long life bread
has
addatives - chemicals - in it to help it keep
in-store baked goods may not have those addatives
that will please the 'progressives' but confound
the traditionalists
their traditions, however, are less than half a century old
Long long ago
efore the development of
breast implants
the falsies were worn outside the skin
there are always tales of young women returning
to school after the summer break with huge chests
and somebody bumps into them
and a cup of their empty bra collapses...
the premiere exponant of the big chest was
in the day
Mae West
and the idea came that a
life jacket
should keep the casualty's face out of the water
and so they changed from the traditional
load of cork strips all around the chest
to keep your head out of the water
to lfe preservers that have
most of their bouyancy in the
tit area
and so they were called
Mae Wests
in the famous? film
I'm no angel 1933
Mae West says
Beulah, peel me a grape
photographs can inform as well as decieve
one recent school lunch photo succeeded in
portraying a loaf of bread as a submarine bun
but the revealing ones got less publicity
on the lines of peel me a grape...
some of the fruit and veg were cut open
the implication being
look at this tomato we've been sent
it's full of
SEEDS
look at this pepper
it's got seeds and is almost empty
why are we being sent this reject food?
like the new mum hosting her first dinner party...
sitting beside hubby's boss
she suddenly realises she has
cut up all the meat on the boss's plate
two worlds
one world promoting five a day
and another saying
how do you expect us to prepare fresh fruit and veg?

12th January 2021

we probably need to preface this with a little fact checking
Chester Road Schools were at the junction of and
Stewart Street
and so they were nearly opposite
where Sunderland Royal Hospital now is
nothing particular is marked on present day maps of the site
Sunderland Technical College 1901 - 1961
Sunderland Polytechnic 1969 - 1992
University of Sunderland 1992 to date
what follows refers to Sunderland Polytechnic in 1977
what we had was
Chester Road Infants School
1895 - 1981
so
at around 1977
Sunderland technical college
was in process of converting itself into
a polytechnic
Chester Road Shool was
Infant, Junior and Secondary all on one site
at a time when 'normal school' ended at age 14
and so there were lots of quite big buildings
clearly a technical college would not have a
Biology department that took in ecology
and so
at some point
a polytechnic biology department was established in the
secondary building at Chester Road Schools
at that time there was only the one staff toilet
and the women in the department launched a complaint over
the head of department emerging from that toilet
without having fully adjusted his dress
there was a chap running the ecology course that Ricker was on
there were two
other Durham University Zoology or Ecology graduates
who had been recruited to the department
at this time we surmise that since at that time
technical colleges were not independent but
supervised by local authority education committees
a lot of education committee members were
co-opted as board members of the polytechnic
the core issue here was that
the council
decided to row back on allocating the redundant secondary school building
to the polytechnic
and decided to
'demolish it, so that the Primary School could have a
larger playground
in that context
the boys and girls had separate playgrounds
but the Primary and Secondary boys had the same playground
times have changed - a little
the modern emphasis is on age rather than gender separation
in shades of the new
Mo Mowlam academy in Redcar
there were no
Modern Schools
pupils who failed their 11+
stayed at Chester Road in the Secondary department
eventually staying until age 15
as the school leaving age was raised
David Hutton was the son of the head in 1961
David went on to be Bishop of Liverpool
The Secondary kids did little esle but
music
and now we conclude that we were wrong
it was the infant department that was closed first
and became a department building for the polytechnic
we don't know how much of The University of Sunderland is now
on that site in Chester Road but
some at least, of it is in Chester Road
poyltechnics gaining independence from local authorities
in light of
democracy
dictating that polttechnic buildings should be demolished to
create playgrounds
and nature reserves should be up-rooted to provide
football pitches
because 'that's what people want'
was a significant step

one fine day our Ricker was about the business of
The Unversity of Sunderland and the University of Dundee
he was in the delightful
Glen Clova
in Scotland ya know
and he came across a baby rabbit in a snare
and he released it
and he thought
I should have taken that to show the girls
two girls
one Margret Rule
not the one who salvaged the ship
see now the truth is out,
Ricker wanted his friend Janet to join him on his course
at Sunderland
at Sunderland means at Sunderland ... in Sunderland would mean within the boundaries of the
can't believe this CITY
anyway
casual observers of Ricker and Janet had begun to utter
get a room
but Margret would have been a lot quicker to offer a room
anyway, the only person who passed that course was
a Primary School teacher in Sunderland who was
doing it for a laugh
another problem with uni
if the student has a better job than the lecturer
and works for the same employer...
the tutor does not feel his job is threatened by passing the student
setting that aside
we have here three things
Day of the Triffids
Tribble Trouble
and
Mathew 6 : 25-34 and Luke 12 22-32
Consider the lillies of the field
how they grow
they toil not
neither do they spin
but I say onto you
that even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these
it goes on to say God takes all this trouble to
make the lilies so beautiful
knowing that one day soon they will be cut down and dried
and set into the fire as fuel
P G? Wodehouse
humerously uses the phrase to refer to
the idle rich who do no labour
Spock referring to tribbles...
whick are small furry un-sentient
un-sentient - with no consciousness
that did nothing but eat and procreate - have babies
says
They remind me of the lilies of the field
they toil not, neither do they spin
we are not happy with a police service who
send out the lads to
take down the personal details of
prosperous women they like the look of
who are following the rules
and excuse them
breaking up raves and house parties
they are contemplating
the lilies of the field
and not tending the hoards of tribbles
and so
somebody set tht snare and
the baby rabbit was probably not worth
the trouble of cooking at that age
and its protestations were probably warning off
more suitable game
so on balance Ricker probably did what the hunter would have done
release the little on to grow up to a useful size
di the fact that he did not show the bunny to Margret
indicate that he did not want to
deepen his relationship with her?
for the sake of a Janet who naffed off anyway

11th January 2021

You may have noticed that we have
a bit of a think about universities
what we do want to clarify is the concept that
what universities are achieving
is to bolster the old addage
or saying
clogs to clogs in three generations
if you see universities as
engines for social mobility
if you target the disadvantaged for help in
replacing the prosperous
you take a talented waif
make them on a Boaty McBoatface basis
and then you say to their children
we ain't havin' nuffin to do with you
you toffs
it's not social advancement
or even social equalisation
it's
social churn
the old PolPot concept of
Year Zero
and
Continuous Revolution
you are not eliminating the elite
you are swapping personnel within the elit
George Orwell
Animal Farm
all animals are equal
but
some animals are more equal than others
you end up with an
inexperienced elite
a randomly selected bunch of idealists
who don't know how to get the roof fixed
you can't just pluck people from obscurity
and shoehorn them into the elite
by a purge of the
old guard
meet the new boss
same as the old boss
journalists pride themselves on
holding government to account
that is just cover
what they actually do is
press government for
an exclusive
and that pushes them into these mad crazy
cut and paste
policy developments
that one news organisation can claim as
a scoop
give us a scoop on your response to this
'crisis'
or we'll publish as scoop on your
sex life or finances
that DOES NOT
protect the public from incompetent government
it exposes the public to
back of an envelope calculations
one of the worst side-effects of
democratising knowledge - or at least qualifications
is what the leftists would call
entryism
in particular
building on concept of
the squaddie - grunt footsoldier
carrying a
fieldmarshal's batton
in his knapsac
we have all sorts
police, journalists, politicins
deciding
the only thing that's stopping me from doing
brain surgery
is that I haven't bought a licence
the idea that if you are a copper or a graduate
your warrant card or degree certificate
makes you an all powerful polymath

The Dilbert Principle
Scott Adams, incompetent people get promoted
out of the work flow
and so the fading
managing director or
chief operating officer is 'promoted to'
non-executive chair
and not sacked because
all her mates are in the same boat and
they could screw up a whole bunch of companies
if they felt slighted
The Peter Principle
is about people who are
promeoted into a job they can't do
because they were such a success in
an entirely different role
Parkinson's Law
is that
work expands so as to
fill the time available for its completion
and so we will wkae up every morning
for the foreseeable
to find out what has been made illegal today
because
legislators
presenteeism
opposite of absenteeism
where people show up where they should not be
causes them to
do something
anything
just to feel needed

we have done an experiment that we do not recommend you copy
what we have done is
for a few days
we sanitised a hand with the standard
alcohol and glycerine hand sanitiser
but did not wash it with water
what we want to emphasise here is the
problem we have with
fist bumps
although the effect here has not been perfect
the pictures illustrate that
the palm side of your hand is
broadly speaking
self cleansing
because of the type of skin that covers it
the back of the hand has different skin and
in normal use is not
rubbed on anything
dead skin that is kept dry
and that includes being washed in alcohol
that is 'wet with' alcohol is dry
if the alcohol is strong enough
will not rub off as easily as wetted skin
and
the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet
egt dirty and stay clean
automatically
it's part of their function
dead skn on other parts of your body
absorb dirt and build up
it's the contrast we are trying to illustrate here
if you have pathogens on your hands...
they are much more likely to be on the backs of your hands
the handshake has evolved as the most appropriate form of
social touching
because no matter what you do
the palms of your hands will be
the cleanest part of your skin

although the effect here has not been perfect
the pictures illustrate that
the palm side of your hand is
broadly speaking
self cleansing
because of the type of skin that covers it
the back of the hand has different skin and
in normal use is not
rubbed on anything
dead skin that is kept dry
and that includes being washed in alcohol
that is 'wet with' alcohol is dry
if the alcohol is strong enough
will not rub off as easily as wetted skin
and
the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet
get dirty and stay clean
automatically
it's part of their function
dead skn on other parts of your body
absorb dirt and build up
it's the contrast we are trying to illustrate here
if you have pathogens on your hands...
they are much more likely to be on the backs of your hands
the handshake has evolved as the most appropriate form of
social touching
because no matter what you do
the palms of your hands will be
the cleanest part of your skin

and here we get a bit deeper
people have evolved from creatures that emerged fro
the oceans
skin
skin is essentially skin
skin originally was all
fish skin
all other skin is a development from fish skin
we use fish skin to cover gaps from the likes of burns
skin is essentially designed to
at least occasionally
get wet
setting aside any consideration that this patient has
vitiligo
mottled skin
this hand was washed with
pure - no soap etc. - tap water
and rubbed well with a towel after getting thoroughly wet
it is the length - duration - of the towelling that matters
paper towels that simply mop up water are not going to do this
get the skin wet and then rub with the towel for the
Happy Birthday singing
this will lift the dead skin
and the conclusion here is...
although cosmetics companies do sell
exfoliant creams - tooth past fro the skin
a lot of women - in particular
through constant use of
foundation and concealer
never get their skin really
WET
and potentially contaminated layers of dead skin build up
an infection and cancer risk
and most people will remember the woman who gave herself
cancer by using talcum powder instead of washing

what we are not hearing about at present is
norovirus
the standard advice is that
hand washing is more effective against norovirus than is alcohol
the problem here is that
SARS corona viruses - respiratory viruses - are in exhaled droplets
norovirus is in little traces of faecal matter
if you effectively wash all the shit off your hands
you won't put norovirus onto surfaces
if you perfunctorily douse your shitty hands with alcohol
the alcohol may not seep all the way into you faecal trace
if you wash your hands clean
you won't kill the virus
but you will consign it to the sewers
if you pick up faecal material in public WC
and rinse your hands and dry them with
a wall mounted hand dryer, until they no longer feel wet
you heard the term
sticks like
shit on a blanket?
all that hand washing stuff is inaccurate and
for the suppression of
salmonella and norovirus
not 'flu, or SARS or CoViD

this is all about the
cut and paste approach of UK governments to
any sort of crisis
the deep seated belief that the only people who know anything
about anything
are or were at Oxford
it is generally called
Not invented here syndrome
take an inappropriate Oxford idea
in preference to a
fits like a glove solution from
the provinces
most people would think Oxford was in the provinces
for UK government
anything outside
Whitehall and Oxford
is provincial
and that includes 6 million 'Londoners'
who are assumed to sleep in the
Home Counties
to take public health advice suitable for norovirus
and cut and paste CoViD at the masthead
is like
giving a sugary drink to a diabetic in need of insulin
norovirus suppressed - CoViD rampant

People have
flashbacks
sometimes a flashback can trigger an emiphany
a lot of that Freudian paschoanalysis
that regression therapy
depends on
digging out a repressed memory and confronting it with
a more mature mind
Our Ricker had a flashback like that over the holidays
he suddenly remembered something he used to do
he still can't remember at what age he did it
or for how long
Ricker now remembers that for some period of time
probably late teens to mid thirties??
he was in the habit of
trying and failing
regularly
to sleep with his head
UNDER the pillow
for fear of being battered in his sleep
as he had been battered in the playground
and that widening out into a reluctance to
sleep in a strange bed
not being adventurous
having a deep seated
fear of success
as other may have a fear of failure
in no way has he afraid of the boy who kicked his face in
the boy was not big or a bully the stress evolved not from the incident but from the
experience of the universal conclusion that
Ricker had it coming
for being such a smart arse
that coming from
school, teachers every authority figure
and Ricker being the child expelled
despite him being quite popular with the children if not the teachers
and then to be constantly schooled in the belief that it was
noblese oblige
his duty to
give the little guys a chance
Ricker never answered questions in class
until all the other kds had had a go
if the other kids got the right answer
Ricker would be silent
he would not jostle to be the first with the obvious answer
and sometimes his classmates were seen by teachers as
being ley off the hook
by the idea that
Ricker will know
a sense amongst teachers that figuring things out for themselves
the top streamat the Grammar School was for the
slavish rote learners
the kids who screamed the place down if
he actual exam wasn't exactly the same as the
past papers
the second to top stream was for the kids who
figured things out
in the day there was a motor racing driver called he had preferred maths at school because
learn a few simple rules and figure it out in the exam
as opposed to - one may say - History with all those dates to remember
some people lke remembering
some folk like figuring things out
we are told that people such as footballer Bobbie Charlton
and a rugby player called Wilkinson
were very reliable because
they practiced relentlessly
and so
James Hunt would not be a welcome guest speaker at
most schools
his advice would be
gut it guys
bin the flannel and stick to the pain points
not philosophy beloved of teachers who
above all
want to keep kids occupied
we can't pass up the opportunity to tell the Sam about the
fighter pilot invited to speak at a school
and he's describing a dog fight and
he appears to be saying
and those Fockers came right at me out of the sun
and the teach was just about to break in and explain that
Fockers is a make or brand of 'plane
whenthe veteran said
and them fuckers were Meshersmitts
so many surprises when young people leave the
enchanted land that is
school
school is about finding
inefficient ways to do things
in order to put the time in

Lawrence Ennis 1871 - 1938
a Scottish born engineer
best known as the
Managing Director of
Dorman Long
and specifically....
the main supervisor of
The construction of,br. The Sydney Harbour Bridge
Here's the thing
not a local lad
when he was 15 he emigrated to the United States
from West Calder in Scotland
he worked for the
American Bridge Company
and didn't join Dormans until
1903
as
superintendant of bridge and construction works
in 1905 he was made works manager
and General Manager pf the company in 1915
and a company director in 1924
his OBE came in 1918 in recognition of his
conversion of the works into
a munitions manufactury during the Great - First World - War
and so and so at the time of his elevtion to the board
he
'naffed off' to Australia
He lived in Australia from 1924 to 1932
to supervise the constrution of this
Sydney Harbour Bridge thingy
took 'im long enough
when he got 'home' he was made
Managing Director
and supervised the building of the
Warrenby Works
people see pictures of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and
get into the habit of thinking the toy
Sunderland got built over the River Wear is similar Sydney Harbour Bridge has
side by side on one level
six lanes of roadway, four train and tram tracks it is
mahusive
3,770 feet long
160 feet wide
longest span 1,650 feet
mid span clearance above the water - 161 feet
railway 4 foot eight and a half inch gauge
electrified 1500 volt DC
since 1992 there has been a road tunnel to
relieve the traffic demand
motor vehicles only
an earlier attempt to releve the traffic Ronan Point
the tower block that was demolshed by a gas cooker
Reed and Mallick now call themselves
Reema
People probably assume that
Dormans no longer exists
Dorman Long
founded 1875
formerly base on Teesside
now located in
Northamptonshire England
www.dlteng.com
in 1934
Dormans built
The Newport Bridge
and The Newport Bridge between
Middlesbrough and Billingham (Stockton-on Tees)
is in
massive daily use
BUT
all this fuss about
The Tansporter Bridge....
a bridge nobody ever used...
and what did the authorities who constantly want to spend
more and more money on the Transporter
do?
they bolted the Newport Bridge down
to save keeping the mechanism in good order
in 1967 14 steel making companies were they included Dorman Long
but not the bridge building arm
in 1982 Redpath Dorman Long was bought by
Trafalgar House
and merged into
Cleveland Bridge and Engineering
we will not attempt the correct spelling of but Kvaerner is a Norwegian Heavy Industrial Company
Oslo then
Aker bought that and named itself Kvaerner
you see all these changes of ownership Cleveland Bridge - after a management buy-ot and before
selling out to
The Al Rushaid Group in Dubai
got the contract to build the
New Wembley Stadium
actually Al Rushaid 2000
Wenbley Stadium 2002
Ł60 million of steelwork
BUT
Hollandia were a sub-contractor to Cleveland Bridge
Cleveland Bridge were involved because of the arch over the pitch
Cleveland Bridge pulled out of the project in 2004
it was a bit complicated but it appears that
when Cleveland Bridge pulled out
Hollandia became direct sub-contractors to
amin contractors
Multiplex or Brookfield Multiplex
and the Hollandia workforce had their conditions degraded
and 200 were sacked for striking
and Brookfield Multiplex balamed Cleveland Bridge
and they had a big law suit
Dormans Built The Newport Bridge
and Cleveland Bridge built
The Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge
in the 1960s
four brothers called
Scott
were pupils at Coatham Grammar
at the time Cleveland Bridge were building
The Forth Road Bridge
and
The Severn Bridge
The Scott brothers dad was
reputed to be
the boss
at Cleveland Bridge
they lived in a big house in
Saltburn by the Sea
in Yorkshire, North Riding
at the time but now in
Redcar and Cleveland
we are reckoning that the Scott house was
the last house on the north west end of
Victoria Terrace
one day Ricker gets home from school and his mam says
I've been to see Mrs Scott
apparently Maisie was well impressed by the house
even though she only got as far as a ante-room
like there was a sofa in the hall
the only reason Ricker could work out why mama had been to
Chez Scott
was that
Ricker was tutoring Scott sprog number 3
because he had landed a place at Oxford to
read medicine
and he hadn't done
A' level biology
and the teaching staff
sorry lads
didn't feel up to it
Mr Stott and Mr Bulmer
Mr Stott was on a short break from life in
South Africa
a> wasn't a graduate
but his best claim to fame...
no not that he drove for Reilies coaches,BR> at the time of the Dibble Bridge tragedy
no
when DB was in the navy
he had sailed somewhere near
The Galapagos Islands
he called them
Gala pagos
not Galapa gos
and he'd nearly been there
wrong again
Scott I R
was a year older than
Scott P M
there was a Scott I
but he was younger and probably not one of the brothers
Scott I R was known as Ian
and Scott I was probably Ian
and you wouldn't name two brother the same
and so Ricker was probablytutoring his classmate Ian's
kid brother
there was a problem
we are kind of guessin that what ricker was doing
for the most part was
providing Paul, Peter, whatever previous papers of A' level or more likely
special level biology papers
so Ricker does not know whether Peter Scott? actually sat
any biology papers since he had an unconditional offer from Oxford
so one day
Ian Scott approaches Ricker with the proposition that
There are only two sexes
men and women
so this was around 1970 and Ricker had a copy of
Scientific American
and in it there was a graphic putting
drawings of people on a line across the page Ricker does not know whether he ever showed this to The Scotts
or what happened to it
this would have been an issue sparked by a question from a past paper
you can imagine the conflict in the mind of the son of
a major industrialist faced with strictures from him
about how to deal, as a doctor or medical student
with patients who were
dimorphic - let alone trans
we started to exercise with
Lawrence Ennis Whether or not you accept that
Dormanstown
is IN or NEAR Redcar
There is ahuge headquarters for a social housing organisation
it may be called
Beyond Housing
when it was built it was called
Coast and Country
there is a bus garage and
a veterans club
The Royal British Legion
and two parades of shops
and they are near the Steel Works entrance on
The Trunk Road
and the parades of shops flank and open space called
Ennis Square
so now - if you/ve read this
you know why it is called
Ennis Square
s level papers evolved out of
Scholarship papers into special level papers
There was hostility at Coatham to
Ricker doing S levels
not because he couldn't hack them
but because he was seen as somebody
not in need of a scholarship
the problem was
schlarships were intended for
not to put too fine a point on it
the illigitimate sons of the unbelievably clever
not the excess offspring of the rich and powerful
and so they were
based on the same sylabus as A'levels
but they were old style - pre only connect
University Challenge - College Bowl - abstruse
that did not please the parents of
highly coached hard working idiots
now the Salt of the Earth
abstruse is from the Latin
away from the common thrust

4th January 2021

we are gong to play a little festive game
it's about imaginging the history of Redcar
we start with the
real person alert
Sir Charles Turner 2nd Baronet of
Kirkleatham Hall
now demolished but if you go see the stables,,,,
you can guess what the hall was like
1773 to 1810
elected MP for Kingstone upon Hull - 1796
died aged 37 in 1810
left his estate to his widow
the daughter of Sir William Gleadowe-Newcomen
She later married
Henry Vansittart
The High Sheriff of Yorkshire
1820?
on account of because
over the past fifty years
most of the farmland between the villages of the estate
has been built on with semi and detatched housing
ther is confusion about whether the likes of
Warrenby, Dormanstown, Coatham, Kirkleatham
are in Redcar of not
chesow - choose for your self how you see it
Sy Cuthbert's Church in Kirkleatham has attached
The Turner Mausoleum
it was erected in 1740 - the Mausoleum
in 1854 Christ Church Coatham was built
from the benefaction of
Mrs. Teresa Newcomen
Teresa Newcomen was born in London in 1813
her parents were
Henry Vansittart of Kirkleatham and
Teresa Newcomen
Teresa Vansittart married her cousin
Arthur Newcomen
in 1841
her husband died in 1848 and she never re-married
she died in the Community of the Holy Rood in
North Ormesby
which she had set up
She built churches, hospital and convalescent homes
She built Christ Church Coatham in 1854
we would say
around 20 years after the death of
Augustus Pugin, architect
if you know that empty space between
Newcomen Terrace
and where the old Cleveland Golf Club club house was
the Coatham Enclosure...
on that land, at one time
an early verion of
Sacred Heart School
and a convalescent home she paid Ł 4,500 to build
#and run by
the Sisters of the House of the Good Samaritan
stood
#the home until 1951
the school for a little longer
the replacement school was on
Flemmings' Field
opposite the present Sacred Heart on Mersey Road
so she pid for the
Cottage Hospital in North Ormesby
where Ricker's dad died
clearly, Teresa Newcomen was a
High Church Anglican it was called
the Church in the Fields
we are thinking here - no evidence
we are thinging that
early on Treesa Newcomen was told that
she could not be interred in
The Turner Mausaleum
because she was not
a man
and she built a whole church of her own at Coatham
to compensate
we can say that when the Bishop saw it...
he insisted that the paintings of the Saints
in the niches in the wall
behind the altar
were
painted out
they are now and almost always have been
palin white niches
Ricker has been told that there is no record of his having had
a doctor called Fallows
Rev. Fallows was a vicar at Coatham
there was a chap called Fallows who was
a bio-chemistry grduate
two local ladies paid for him to re-train as a doctor He was Dr Fallows
his consulting room was on Station Road
between the old
Gazette Office
and the now Youth and Child Services building
on the corner of
Milbank Tce.(Coatham Road) and Station Road

28th December 2020

For those ex-pats who were at
Coatham from 1963...
or at Saltscar from 1973?...
knocked down and replaced wth this

Secondary Section

Primary Section

sometimes two words can seem linked
when they are not
agile having the power of quick movement
Latin agilis from agere to do
fragile easily broken frail
Latin fragilis breakable
simple viruses have little of no defence against
having their structures disrupted

We can say that our Ricker
raised himself as an Anglican
a little boy of 10 can fail to see the bigger picture
a little boy of ten does not want some things a little girl of 8 was very keen to be his girlfriend
and Ricker didn't want a girlfriend
and that little girl was
Alison Backhouse
and that family was quite a score to marry into...
but Ricker went to a
Church of England Primary school
and Ricker and Alison went to
confirmation classes together
and that was after Ricker had left that school and that school and church were
Christ Church, Coatham
and Ricker lost contact with Alison when he left Newcomen Primary
and went to Coatham Boys' Grammar
but, perversely one may say
Ricker kept up his association with Christ Church, Coatham
but perhaps the perversity was not with him because
Coatham Grammar, so close to Christ Church, Coatham
was affiliated to
St. Peter's, Redcar
and so Ricker served on the altar of
Christ Church Coatham for
The Reverand Allan Wordsworth
and he came off the rota when he went off to Newcastle
to med school
however,
something else happened at that time
Rev Wordsworth retired
and his successor
styled himself
Father Smith
insisted on being addressed as
Father
not
Vicar
and that had a practical effect on Ricker
he found himself serving in
a cope
not in the surplice and cassock he was accustomed to
and so although he was in Redcar every weekend
he stopped attending church
the church was no longer the still point in a
turbulent life that it had been.
and that probably marked an important change in
Redcar life
Rev Wordsworth had three sons
Ricker nerver met the eldest
he was an Anglican priest withe the reputation of being a
Trot
a Left Wing Agitator
the next son was Allan and David Wordsworth shared the service rota with Ricker
the serving roles were split in an odd way
Les Cornforth was Sacriston Ricker hardly ever met him
Ricker assisted Rev Wordsworth at
Sung Eucharist
either or both 8,00 am and 11,00 am
he hardly ever attended
Evensong, wher David Wordsworth assisted
the duties of a server at Evensong
consisted of
extingushing the altar candles at the mid point when
the proceedings switched from worship to
a sort of 'social'
vicar swtching from addressing God to addressing his flock
with a sermon and public notices and such and a sing song
Ricker did that so rarely that he was often
no honestly once out of three occasions???
convinced he was going to do it at the wrong time
in the mass, he had lots of jobs and
he had a bell, not handbell shaped but like
a cheese dome held up by a central pillar around a foot across and
a foot and a half high
and when the celebrant said certain things Ricker would
sound his bell with the sort of mallet that percusionists use on
the big J Arthur Rank gong
best seen bashing
Tubular Bells
by the likes of
Mike Oldfield
and there was somebody at the back of the church who would
toll the church bell every time Ricker hit his bell
so that the people who could not attend church would know that
the host was being blessed
you've got the wafer and the wine
in the Anglican Church
the wafer REPRESENTS the body of Christ
the wine REPRESENTS the blood of Christ
in the Roman Catholic Church
the wafer is TRANSFORMED INTO the body of Christ
the wine is TRANSFORMED INTO the body of Christ
Methodists don't have wine
some of them are Reccabites - total abstainers
Ricker's Auntie Mabel was a Reccabite
her sister, Eunice, drank beer
back to the Wordsworths
the middle son, Allan
author if you Google him
retired adult social worker if you knew him
was in contrast to his elder brother
The Tory Party Agent for the Redcar Constituency
and you see this split in the Church
rightists - just enough charity to keep the body and soul of the poor together
leftists - the vulnerable and the centre of the universe
Thereby hangs another tale
Kirkleatham Hospital
a proper hospital
that is
a miniature version of the place where
The Chelsea Pensioners live
a retirement home
several bosses at the time
including
Peter Southeran
and Allan Wordsworth Junior
sheltered housing
for the elderly
the respectable elderly
not you may say a doss house for
the indegent poor
definitely NEVER a Workhouse
Rev. Wordworth had a regular locum
is there a character in
The Importance of Being Ernest
called
Chasuble?
when a celebrant wears a cope
it's called an alb
they are both white as in albino
over the alb the celebrant wears
a chasuble
the fancy embroidered cape
around his neck he wears a sort of scarf
that is very long, stiff and about 4 inches wide
like his assistant he wears rope around his waist
his or her
and probably dangling from a wrist a sort of
short version of the scarf
how you lay out the vestments
find them and return them
there is a chest of huge shallow drawers
the alb is probably in a cupboard hung up wardrobe style
the chasuble is spread on the floor of a drawer
the other three items are set out in a specific manner
the scarf is formed into a letter H
the kerchief is an I
the rope is laid out as an S
for Rev. Wordsworth
IHS
stood for
Jesus Hominem Salvator
for Father Eves
IHS stood for
In His Service
The Vatican decreed
services should be spoken and sung in the local vernacular
the Latin Mass was banned
but it clearly was not an edict to take note of diversity
The Latin Mass - we know we are swapping Anglican to Roman here
The Latin Mass was a
Lingua franka
as in the Latin names of plant species
the edict for local language use
assumed that in any one community there would be
a churchfull of people who spoke the same
non-Lingua Franka - diversity based - language
Only Irish in this town
only Hispanics in this county
it is not the way the world has gone
and slowly
English
is replacing
Latin
as the Lingua Franka for much of the world
would it have been fairer to leave Latin to its place?
we now see
public health messages in English
causing at least as much trouble as
medical terminology in Latin and Greek
the down side, the deeper down side, is that
New Speak English looses the precision of
Latin, Greek and 'Classical' - non-American - English

21st December 2020

So far as we can see
The Mo Mowlam Academy
formerly
Pathways
will be able to re-open after the 2020 Christmas break
in the new building on Corporation Road, Redcar
moving from Grangetown
we do not think that many of the present clients
commute from Redcar to Grangetown - the one in Greater Eston
There are presently
64 children aged Primary and Secondary
in fact the new building appears to cater for more
Primary - under 11 - pupils than Secondary
some are being bussed from East Cleveland
and they will probably welcome the change of ambience
Mo Mowlam was once the MP for Redcar
She died of a brain tumour
she negotiated the
Good Friday Agreement
as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
natch
Tory Bliar is taking all the credit
The Mo Mowlam Academy caters for
students aged 5 to 16 in Redcar and Cleveland
it is non-residential
the children have Social, Emotional, and Mental Health difficulties
at one point the jargon was
they exhibit unlooked for behaviours
and since half of the are aged
5 to 11
this is
toddler temper tantrums on steroids
Originally, Pathways was based on Tennyson Avenue Grangetown
we suspect that most of the clients will be sleeping in that area
we make no judgement about whether the 'problems'
that lead them to be
permanently excluded from the main stream
are intrinsict to the child or the home environment
we interpret the function of the academy as more to
keep the children out of care
than to get them back into main stream education
but
it would not be unreasonable to assume that
at least some of them are
in care
Pathways was established in the building of a
redundant Primary School and
shall we say
half the Mo Mowlem pupls may not have
matured sufficiently to
graduate to main stream secondary
the expansion of the roll - number of pupils
from 60 to 100
probably does not indicate increased demand
more an opportunity with the new build to
satisfy all known and predicted demand

Our Ricker's cultural references are
way out of date
for instance, he's missed all the episodes of
The Simpsons
that feature
Joe Biden
or is it possible to be
POTUS
President Of The United States
without first being a character in The Simpsons?

we want to play a littel word game
desperate
disparate
if you are the common hack
would you spell that
disperate and disparate?
desperate - beyond hope, in dires straits
or in Dire Straits - the band
from
Latin desperere to despair
not to depair - separate
there was a pair of shoes
now neither is in a pair
they have discovered that they are
disperate, not identical twins but
one left and one right
are you all right?
no she's half left
Latin dis negative par , equal
Depeche Mode
80s band from Basildon
so sweet..
Google meaning of
depeche
1 the dispatch of a message verb
2 to dispatch, rid oneself of
it's almost like the left handed person
unconciously swapping knife and fork
table setting knife on the right
lefthander swaps knife to left hand without missing a beat
depeche
dispatch
we can't be bothered to check whether the Google defintion of
decontaminate is
dis contaminate
do autocomplete keyboards
autocorrect
decontaminate to discontaminate?

when a topic in science becomes
main stream or 'popular'
it gets its edges knocked off
and the simplified version feeds back into the
specialist areas
in chemistry...
in theory
the pre-fix
des
means
as a stand alone...
DES means
drug eluting stent
des in chemistry means without or lacking
and so the chemical term for
a ribose - a sugar like sucrose and glucose fructose
when a molecule is
like ribose but with one OH group missing
it is des oxy ribose
ribose with an oxygen atom missing
if it were ribose with an oxygen atom removed it would be
dis oxyrobose
des it was never there
dis it's been removed
RNA is robose nucleic acid
DNA is desoxyrobose nucleic acid
almost as soon as DNA became famous it was
re-named deoxyribose nucleic acid
what does deoxy mean?
it doesn't mean anything except perhaps that
some hack's short hand wasn't up to the job
and the press conference occured before the
invention of the photocopier
why do we say this
mainly because it
gets on Ricker's tits
but slightly because,BR> you should beware taking
'popular science' too literally
to get to the point
along the way
organisms that got into the habit of storing their genetic material
using a code based on a molecule that was in part constructed from
a molecule that was like ribose but with one OH unit less
found they zipped or kintted together more closely
and were therefore more stable like removing the flash from a casting to get a tighter fit???
all organisms use the cheaper easier to get hold of
ribose version for day to day operations
DNA is like
acid free paper in a museum archive

back in the 1970s
Teesside Polytechnic
ran courses in a
computer programming language called
COBOL
if you were a COBOL programmer you were using
working on
a main frame computer
you had a desk with a keyboard
a dumb terminal
a pencil
and a pad of coding sheets
you marked symbols on the coding sheets in pencil so that you could rub them out to change them
at the end of the day you handed in your coding sheets to
another room
where other people - mostly women
called data entry clerks
read you pencil jottings and
we've missed a detail here
a coding sheet was a grid set out as
row upon row of boxes - usually in green ink
you put up to one character in each box on the sheet
the data entry clerks typed your entries into a machine
that produced
one punched card
to be a small image of each date sheet you had sent in
then the cards wer put into a hopper and reaten by the main frame
that was how you programmed the computer
and you ran the programme on the main frame using the ketboard
an ddumb terminal and the terminal displayed
characters - letters, numbers, symbols
no pictures , no graphics
and the run of your computer programme produced a
print out on a teletype printer
viruses are rather ancient
they live in the COBOL age
the genetic material of a virus is
a stack of Jackard punched cards
but the print out is
several thousand actually we don't know how many
lots and lots of
stacks of punched cards each with a
protein coat in stead of an elastic band
holding it together
for the purposes in hand we shall assume that
we have dispensed with the programmer but
instead of stacks of punch cards
the main frame prints out huge quantities of
data sheets
we will say that each data sheet is sent to the
data entry clerks
and they ahev to
manually type in the instructions to produce the punched cards
if the programme is short and simple
it won't have so much of the
start bits, check bits, end bits
editing safeguards
the data entry clerks are not paid by the programme
they are paid by the card
so they know nothing about how all this works
we are working here on the COBOL programming language as
analogue or virus transmission
it is said - by the people who do this for a living
that if the virus data message is short and simple
the data entry clerks will make an error for every
million cards they transcribe
and that will be the
mutation rate of a simple virus
what happens with the more complex viruses is
they have
editing software built in
and only around one in 100 million
attempts to infect a host cell
successfully infects the host cell with
a code different from the original code
that is
one in 100 million target cells each patient will ingest of inhale
many many virus particles
does that help at all in
explaining
why mutations take so long to take effect?
not withstanding the fact that the errors will be
completely random
BECAUSE,br. the data entry clerks
haven't got the foggiest notion
what a computer programme is
let alone how to tweek it
and
and it is said that RNA is more vulnerable to mutation because
it is a single strand
that is not so
RNA folds just as DNA folds
the difference is
DNA strands snap together lke the teeth of a zip
no gap between the strands two jumpers in a drawer
close but not quite close enough to keep
pesky enzymes that amy be out to destroy the code
out
it makes RNA viruses
more prone to destruction
than DNA viruses
and at the margin
failed destruction may amount to
mutation

empiric empirical
Greek en in, peira trial
empiric - based on the results of
experiment
observation or experience
not
from mathematical or scientific reasoning
quackery
here the thing
a lot of American food and cookery shows
natably
The Barefoot Contessa
make reference to an ingredient they call
kosher salt
kosher means proper in Hebrew
so salt could be 'proper'
but in normal Jewish usage kosher meaans something
more specific
the deal is to comply with from the Old Testament books
Leviticus and Deuteronemy
there is stuff about
no creepy crawlies
animals have to
chew the cud and have cloven hooves
in essence it is mostly about
what animals you can eat and how to prepare them
and so
in essence although there can be
pure or proper salt
kosher salt does not fit into the remit of
animals you can eat
what is referred to as kosher salt is actually
koshering salt
salt of a form suitable for rendering meat kosher
and here the Jews meet the Jehova's Witnesses
The purpose of koshering salt is to
remove blood from the meat
so that you do not eat any blood
here's the clash between the
empiric
and the
scientific
salting meat helps it remain suitable to eat
The various religious texts maintain that this is
due to removing blood
science say that this works by
removing water
when you have a plan or tradition that is
impiric - empiric
it works just in those circumstances
say, to start one particualr car you need to
pull the choke out just so far
that may not be a good plan for a different car
and is no based on a knowledge of how cars are started
but on a ritual for starting that particular car
or model of car

Carol Klein
is an English gardening expert
who also works as a television presenter and newspaper columnist
especially on the BBC's Gardeners' World
as we recall up until about 15 years ago 2005
she owned and ran a
plant nursary
and so her specialty is plant propagation
this involves planting seeds
but also
as the term goes
striking cuttings
and she wth her practicl experience and
her consulting a more academic expert has said
pointed out
one day a bunch of plant cells are happily functioning as
the stem of a plant
Carol comes along with a knife
cuts those cells, and a bunch more, off their plant
and sticks them into a tub of
potting compost
she may do just that or she may
dip the cutting into a box of
rooting compound
along the way
thoe cells react
they react by giving up their life as a cell in a
plant stem
and transform themselves into
root cells
the cutting strikes and the stem becomes a plant
this is dependent on
gene expression
it's like one of those domestic appliances with
the variety of attachments
one moment a drill, next moment a sander
the essence being
no change in the motor or battery
and so
this is a change in gene expression as a result of
environmental change
NOT a mutation in the genetics of the cell

if your world view is founded on trips to theme parks
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
may have more resonance with this question
if you are very young
you don't know how long the things around you
have been where they are
in a theme park
or a computer game
you come across a fallen tree in the forest
to you it is a fallen tree in the forest
you do not see it as an older person may see it,as
a tree that
either was growing on the land before the park developer
bought the land
or as
a fibre glass model put there as a fallen tree
by the construction crew
we use this as an exrtension of the question
if a tree falls in a forest
and nobody is there to hear the sound
was there any sound?
of the crash
and so we have people who think that
Slarty Bartfarst
designed the fossils and installed them on Earth
Earth, the Theme Park
in 4,444 BC or BCE
that's either
Before Christ
or
Before the Common Era
same date different religion
and so we have introduced the concept of
The Fossil Record
In evolutionary biology
punctuated equilibrium
is a concept
relating to the fossil record
in simple terms
we see layer upon layer in the
strata of rocks
where the fossils are all the same
this stability is termed
stasis
and a lot of people are aware of the concept of
a meteor storm putting so much strees of the
dianasaurs
that all but the birds were wiped out
does the Smeg Head spend a lot of time in stasis in Red Dwarf?
punctuated equilibrium came in 1972
and we have a 'debate'
about what evolutionary change is due to
Gradualism
and what to
Catastrophism
in the current context
the CoViD context
we have a load of people saying
the virus will gradually change, mutate
into something different
we are not entirely clear
as to whether
SARS 2019 is
a virus that was a parasite on animals and
jumped to humans
or
in the punctuated equlibrium camp
did some human SARS virus particles accidentally
infect an animal - such as mink
for a virus adapted to parasitising humans
for those individual particles - not the ones left behind
that would be a catastrophe
if they then are sorted out by the catastrophe
only the birds - in dinasaur terms - surviving the event
then
if they find themselves re-introduced to a human host
they won't be the community they used to be
they will be the birds and they will find they
humans riddled with mammals

14th December 2020

update

Crohn's disease
irritable bowel syndrome
around 80 per cent of Crohn's disease occurs
either wholely 35 per cent
or partly - the other part being just below - 45 per cent
in the ileum
the illium s the part of the gut between the stomach and the
small intestine
the small intectine is very long
Ricker has seen one stretched out - about 30 feet
it is called small because it is much narrower than
the large intestine or colon
and so
Crohn's disease and
colltis inflamation of the colon
occur around 35 feet apart
as the shit flies
we will therefore consider Crohn's disease
we have said that
Peyer's Patches
are located in the wal of the ilium
we have said they contain M cells
and these are responsible for
pumping antibodies from the blood into
the gut lumen - the food containing space in the tube
we have not said that
Crohn's disease consists of or is characterised by
1 inflammation - not flammation as in flammable liquids???
of the gut from that point down
2 hypertrophy - over growth - of
immune tissues in the wall of the ilium
this suggests that in people with Crohn's
either the immune tissue does not contain enough
M cells
or
they are there but they don't work properly
there is some, just some, evidence that ingesting toxins
especially by smoking - active or passive
may cause the damage to these M cells
or the patient may have an inherited gene defect
clearly
pathologists should be counting M cells in the
ilium of Crohn's victims

7th December 2020

There's been a bombing raid on Redcar
the most serious we have ever seen

a yarn bombing raid
and Redcar and Cleveland Council have a
Christmas gift for property owners in
Corportion Road - south side
This storage tank for the
sprinkler system for
Mo Mowlam repositary for peculiar people
breaches the property line
thus setting a precident
so if you own a property in Corporation Road
south side
you can build a nanny great porch
on the front of your house
but only if you are
an MP or former MP

There now follows an explanation of the
problems associated with the
storage and transportation of vaccines
say you were organising a picnic
say you catered for twenty people
say ten turned up
footie on the telly...
say you brought plentiful supplies of
Walls Viennetta ice cream
walls not sausages
dog based advet reference
Walls have this gigantic factory where they
pump ice cream and gas - like a soda syphon
into boxes
and then
drench the boxes in
liquid nitrogen
instant freeze
tiny ice crystals
no damage to the ice cream
take the surplus home and put it in the freezer
you will come back to a
solid block of ice lying in the botton of the box
vaccine destroyed
regarding transport capacity
957 doses on a tean tray
how many tea trays could you get into the back of a car?
1,000 times 1,000 times 60
one dose for everybody - you need two
50,000 tea trays
how many do you think would fit into the average
armoured car

Here we have a tale of
The Left Behind North
Redcar High Street has two town clocks
one at either end of the pedestrianised section
the newer, smaller one was set up by the local
Rotary Club
and
probably using imported American castings
a company called Hawkins Clocks were the contractors
at the time Hawkins clocks were newly established and based in
Market Deeping in Lincolnshire
They are now based near Southampton
and the clock although looking good
painting and imported castings
much of the time it is an example of the
clock that is right twice day
aside from all the TVs and 'phones and computers in
Ricker's house
at least two are radio controlled
obviously the proper, original
Redcar Town Clock
has a pendulum and such and probably it is a major question
whether it should be modernised
but the new one...
1989 the company was founded so that is about right for the Redcar 2 clock
that could stand some updating
we are farily sure a different company has some sort of contract money for the High Street?
fix the clock
and better still get a new one
another art installation
that indicates the state of the tide and
whether it is coming in or going out

This Avonmouth tragedy
three grandads
'dragged' enticed ??
a 16 yer old to his death
because???
too chippy to retrain?

when we get the technical report on the
December 2020 sewage works tragedy near Bristol, England
we may see the term
aerial decomposition
reports indicate that a gang of 4 or 5 workers
were welding or grinding on a silo
that probably contained methane
and had not properly or at all
purged it with nitrogen
and an explosion blew the roof off
this could have caused the workers to
fall to their deaths
a large amount of methan would then have
escaped as a cloud and
after mixing with oxygen in the air
the cloud would have
detonated
causing a shock wave
it may have been the shock wave that caused the fatalities
rather than a fall from height
shades of the South Bank coke works tragedy....
no need to train these lads
just hope for the best

we were watching BBC Look North Newcastle
and they played out
when the boat comes in and they lyric included
thou shall have a salmon
now
a couple of ponts here
we think the original was a
bloater
and the alternative is
herring
it's all about
the silver darlings
the massive East Coast
herring fishery
and one verse substitutes
mackerel
at that time...
salmon was a
sport fish
caught in rivers and streams
not caught by trawlers in the North Sea
interesting note about fish eating
people were happy to eat herring and the derived kippers
and cod and ling
they were a lot less keen on mackerel
because mackerel were known as
bottm feeders
living on sewage
a bloater was the Yarmouth version of a kipper
The British have a thing about eating fish
they pretty much insist on only eating fish if it is
pelagic
they don't like shellfish
they will eat plaice
pelagic fish live
neither close to the bottom
nor close to the shore
in other words after a lot of trouble with
contaminated oysters and mussels
they wanted their fish caught far far away from
sewage outfalls
and to theis day most fish caught in
British coastal waters are sold to
mainland Europe
and the British eat
fish caught off Iceland
the opposite of pelagic is demersal

They don't build them like they used to
The Regent is no match for the demo team
but
they need some mansized tools to shift it

Ricker wants to be a bit self indulgent here
perhaps you don't think you know what it's like being Ricker
you probably do
Ricker in a university is like
a teenager being forced to attend a birthday party
for a cousin's toddler
and being told
be nice
let the little ones win the party games
This a web site not a Twitter account and so
we have to make a judgment call about whether
an issue is important enough to change it

This is be kinfd the retail staff week
not Go on be a bit more stropy with the customers week
Re Tuesday 1 Dec am Redcar WHSmith
do you have to pass a special
are you stroppy enough test to get a job with
WH Smith or Post Office Counters?
This is NOTHING to do with
delivery staff, posties
ergarding POC - post office counters
The Post Office has to try to get its head around the fact that
it is no longer a letters business
it is a parcels business
creating a queue down the High Street by
interrogating every 'customer'
as to whether there is
contraband
in their parcel
what would that be?
apparently anything nail varnish
alcohol
YOU DON'T WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT
YOU ARE NOT BORDER SEVURITY AGENTS
warning people
we may open your parcel and if it contains
contraband as about etc
we may destroy it without notice
great get out for lost parcels?

regarding WH SMith
you are responisible for helping and guiding
the public in their efforts to maintain
social distancing
Ricker stands in the queue
the doors open
he steps
in front of him ther are a line of
around a dozen vacant
stand here and wait spots
woman stacking shelves says
I didn't say you could come in
get back in the queue
no not at the door
out on the street
eventually the bloke who should have been managing the door arrives
and says
not my responsibility if pushing you out causes you to break
social distancing with the next person in the queue
THE WHOLE THING IS EVERYBODY'S RESPONSIBILITY

we are going to tell one of our stories
to illustrate a point
many many years ago
Lewis Jordan
was a school teacher in the Redcar area
he was married to
Lois Jordan
and they had two children, a boy and a girl
for the purposes of this story we have to say we have
no evidence of any link between this family and
Eddie Jordan
the F1 motor racing Jack-in-a-Box
Mark Jordan's sister gave the
or a second
Best Man's Speech
at her brother's wedding
unusual
Lewis went from Redcar to Scunthorpe
to advance his career
and then came back to be
head teacher at Rosecroft Secondary
in the teeth of the baby boom around 1975
the council built a new school in Skelton
called
De Bruce
so East Cleveland had several secondary schools
broadly, excluding Guisborough
now parents only have a choice etween a new academy
and having their kids bussed to
Sacred Heart in Redcar
so Rosecroft which wasn't
Brotton warsett
was closed after Lewis Jordan retired
this is the broad brush version
the point we are getting to is that
as Lois Jordan became
old and infirm
she had difficulty sitting down on the toilet and
getting up again
as so a device was fitted to her toilet
we have no idea how commonplace these are
it was a toilet seat that sat on legs
around 40 cm or 8 inches above where the normal seat would be
and so
without constantly fitteng and removing the device
you would need a very
long handled loo brush to keep all thing spic and span
and that is the effect of
The Halo
on casualty recovery in motor racing

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 manufactured 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
is South Wales in Wales or England?
England and Wales then
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

Redcar now has a
Remembrance muriel
Coronation Street reference
Hilda Ogden had a murial - mural
On her living room wall

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

Wash your hands before touching food
eat 'on the go foods' whilst holding them
in the wrapper or a napkin
stifle coughs and sneezes

I asked my congressman
and he said: quote
I'd love to help you son
but you're too young to vote
there ain't no cure for the
summer-time blues

parents get
monay
because they have votes
and so do nutters

2nd November 2020

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 passes 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

as we go through history we may assume that
there are two classes of myth or untruth
earlier there my be more of a tendency towards
honest mistake
when the reverse is adopted without evidence
this may be referred to as
poltical correctness
consider the link between the two words
metropolis
and the word
politic
first the link between
politic
and
politics
politic is an adjective
politics is a noun
and politics is a term for the management of
mass culture
the management of life in big cities
a metropolis is a big city and it presents
management challenges not found in
rural settings
until now
what with , radio and railways and t'internet
we are all either or both
literal and virtual city dwellers
our Ricker was at medical school a long time ago
back in those days ordinary folk knew about
Stanley knives - utility knives
but they had not come across the
multi-tool of the multi-cutter
a circular saw rotates and throws
bitten off bits in one direction
a multi-cutter vibrates
it swings like a demented pendulum
it does not cast swarf
back in the days when Ricker was at medical school
the only form of multi-cutter he knew about was called
a bone saw
most people have spent very little time watching
BBC or Discovery Channel shows about
anthropology
we are not going to venture into the world of
the species that evolved into humans
Ricker is still alive - perhaps only just
but when he was young
present day humans were divided into three groups
Caucasian, Mongoloid, Negroid
Mongoloid includes
Chinese, Japanese, Korean American Indians
The thing is ,,,
there are now five races
African, Asian, Native American, Oceanian
or perhaps there are 4 races
Caucasian, Mngoloid, Negroid Australoid
or perhaps there are 7 races
Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, Atlantean, Aryan
and a couple more without fixed names
back in the days
and not as a racist slur
students such as Ricker at medical school would be told
you can separate the breast bone - sternum
of a Caucasian patient from their ribs
with a Stanley knife
but you will need a bone saw to do the same thing to a
Negroid patient
just supposing that this is true
the likes of heart surgery will be
way less difficult and traumatic for the
Caucasian patient - the European
than for the African patient
if you tell doctors this and it is true
then they may not refer African patients for
treatments they would recommend for white people
but if it is not true
less people who would tolerate such surgery well
will be treated
bone density is a very important clinical factor
and if skin colour leads to wrong assumptions
this is negative
but if skin colour is a
vital marker
failed operations can be avoided
there are times when what you need is
what is true
not
what is politic

We've come across this rather strange
BBC news story about
Darlington Railway Station
there are 4 plus 4a platforms at Darlington
platform 1 and 4 are 'outer' and on the
East coast main line
nestled between them are two
terminus platform 2 and 3
which are the terminus for
Saltburn to Darlington services
we are in a strange transitional phase right now
the thing about platforms 2 and 3 is
They are not electrified
they served DMU - diesel multiple unit - services
between Darlington and Saltburn
calling at Thornby for Stockton
Middlesbrough and Redcar
two things have happened
Darlinton to Saltburn services have been
largely replaced by
Bishop Auckland to Saltburn services
meaning few trains terminate in Darlington
except in emergencies
platform 4a is for such emergencies
mainly when Trasnpennine Express trains have to hang fire in
Darlington on their way from Newcastle to Manchester
the second shift in need is that
Bishop Auckland to Saltburn trains are planned to be
hydrogen powered
and so electrification of platforms 2 and 3 is
not needed
The issue here is that - electrified or not
Darlington has an up and a down
goods loop
so that goods trains do not have to pass through
the train shed
and do not need to have the platforms cleared
so that they can get through
The headline
Darlington to lose status through loss of platforms
we assume
derives from a plan to allow SOME
East Coast Main Line services to
use the goods loop is they are not stopping in Darlington
we should point out that IF the direct trains form
Redcar to London
emerge
they will run
Redcar, Middlesbrough, Thornaby, Eaglescliff, Yarm
Thirsk Northallerton
not via Darlington

to clarify - once again
the East Coast Main Line
is 4 track up to
Northallerton
at Northallerton it splits into two two track lines
one goes to Darlington and Newcastle and Scotland
the other two tracks go to
Teesside and Wearside
The direct trains from
Sunderland to London
neither call at nor visit Darlington
the direct trains from
Redcar to Manchester
neither call at nor visit Darlington

We thought we would mark
Black History Month
with a reference to
Cary grant and Myrna Loy
The movie
Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House
neither of them played
Gussie
she was played by
Louise Beavers
You can cut the story many ways but
one version is
New York advertising agent wants to move
from cramped flat in New York
to
vast wooden hut in Connecticut
amongst other trials...
paying for this extravaganza
relies on him - Grant, Mr Blandings
keeping his job by coming up with a slogan for
Wham, a sort of tinned ham
perhaps not unlike Spam
The family getting under each other's feet so much
the maid - Gussie - is privy to her employer's stress
What are we having for tea today Gussie?
more of that ham?
Oh Misser,
Don't say ham say wham
and an advertising legend is born
and the house is paid for
some would say
this is
cultural misappropriation, or theft
in some eyes
Gussie should have kicked the Blandings
out of their flat
Moved into Mr Blandings office
and the shed in Connecticut
because
she inspired Mr Blandings slogan
that is such a small step from saying
white folks can't wear
corn rows
a particular African version of plaits

we are have made a few comments about the
Regent Cinema project
we do hope the town won't be extracting the remnants of
a rather large number of oversized
sandbags from the beach over coming years
we are contrasting the efforts of the builders of
The Beacon
and the new Regent cinema
we should say
the concrete wall sections were not
cast in situe
they were cast in Belfast
A V Dawson
brought them from the docks one at a time and
the two machines that set them
and the bits the current contractors are busily drilling through
well each had two caterpillar tracks
each of the 4 tracks was brought by its own
STGO category 3 wagon

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

sometimes I feel like
a motherless child

we are not seeking to deal with
precise legal definitions here
in the UK if you
can't be looked after by your
natural parents
there are three options
and you may be normal
or unusual in yourself
the three basic options are
orphanage, children' home
foster parents
adoption
essentially
if a child is adopted by new parents
they are treated as though they were
the adoptive parents' natural children
which transfers a major finacial burden
from the local authority to the new parents
this means that adoption is only really an option for
normal - not special needs - children
although this may not work out if the problems emerge
some time after adoption
children loosing their parents through accidents
are the ones most likely to be adopted
there cn be a lot of money available to
temporary parents who
foster
children
fostering placements can be quite short
foster parents are generally not
natural relatives of the children
sometimes when family members take over responsibility for
a child
they can get quite cross over not qualifying for
fostering fees
here is the crux of the free school meals controversy
the terminology is unhelpful
the legislation talks of
two sorts of money
child support
and
child benefit
child support is a
civil fine payable to a mother by the child's father as
ongoing punishment for
not marrying her
or for having divorced her
it is payable to the mother not the child
child benefit is a reward for a mother for
having got pregnant when having
no visible means of support
no job, no husband
or such at inadequate rates
it is payable to the mother, not the child
in a very real sense
free school meals
are the only benefit
bestowed DIRECTLY on the child
and it is not surprising that some activists see it as
a vital protection for children who
may be being exploited by their parents or guardians

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

19th October 2020

we were wondering...
has Andy Burnham
Labour Leader in exile
seen the movie
Ace in the Hole
people in trouble
immediate help available
but
journalist wants to
give the story legs so it can go national
for local authorities
CoViD 19
the latest goose that lays the golden eggs
for local authorities
There is a saying
a stock response to a question
Oh, that's beyond my pay grade
the people most likely to try to operate
beyond their pay grade are
police officers
around the world they stand for
brute force and ignorance
and their training manual is very thin
it consists of
if ignornce is bliss
'tis follow to be wise

British police reckon on being different
they say they
police by consent
their is a fine line to be drawn here
the line is between
policing by consent
and
appeasement
what this means is that if you consider the
primary role of the police to be to
keep the peace
after all magistrates are also known as JPs
Justices of the Peace
the difficulty is that that shapes the world in the image of
the people who shout the loudest
the nutters who are to be
pacified, placated, appeased
and so we divide the population into three of four groups

the nutters
the (silent) majority
the experts
the traditionalists

and so to the crux of this matter
the core saying

hold on tight to nurse
for fear of something worse

and that is the story of Redcar and
The Tees Valley
over the past twenty to thirty years
somebody came along
Lord Melchet in the 1970s
and said there is a better way to make steel
and the people said....
wll it cost jobs
and Lord Melchet said
Hell yes
and the people said
no way
in the 1960s and the 1970s you had two major
post war re-organisation of British industry under way
the modernisation of the railways and the modernisation of
steel production
there were vast difference between these two processes
the modernisation of the railways replaced two
cohorts of the working class elite
train footplate crew and miners
with
a raggle taggle army of
steering wheel attendants
two minority elites replaced with
low skilled, cheap, quick and easy to train
people in entry level jobs
the modernisation of the steel industry lead to
a reduction in the British Steel
shall we say payroll rather than WORKforce
from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands
when the man of the house is unemployed
and the woman of the house is working
especially if they are not working at home
a conflict between
men with jobs and men without jobs
can be played out as a campaign to promote the idea that
women are at risk in the workplace
however, returning to
nurse and something worse
we should say that nurse in this context is
referring to
governess, or school marm
many, possibly most, technological advances in
industry
result in
the removal from the workplace of
jobs that can only be done by a man
at the transition from
car assembly lines that were simply
conveyor belts
to car assembly lines using
robots and power tools
time and motion experts
worked out how to divide tasks on the assembly line
such that
any worker could carry out the standard task in the standard time
this was the end of
big strong lads
lifting and fitting the wheels
and tall skinny lads with long fingers
installing the instruments into the
back of the dash board
design the workplace to
minimise training costs and
democratise the workplace
what it did do
intentionally or not
was signal to employers
if training is
out the window
we can take on female workers
without worrying that our investment in training will
collide with the female realisation that
pregnancy brings
something more worth doing than
working for a living
and the point of this diversion?
the Get Wet has been collecting the
mutter from the gutter
and they say that
Redcar's Olefin 6
was shut down and 'mothballed'
in September 2020
and as we said not so long ago
chances of re-starting a plant like that
once it has gone cold?
vanishing to zero
and so?
and so
we think there will be
no more flaring in Kirkleatham
ever again
and that should be an encouragement to
people thinking of bringing jobs that
do not involve
sheltering under a dragon's wing

we don't know when was the
High Water Mark of
State controlled Grammar Schools
but there were notable examples
manchester Grammar School
Royal Grammar School, Newcastle
the idea that all the kids
even all the boys
smart enough for it to be worthwhile 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

and for the police?
either
butt out of things you don't understand
or
take care to distinguish
envoronmental activists, and such
from
environmental experts, and such

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

We could get all worked up about how
in the past
dementia wasn't recognised and families suffered losses
due to
The head of household
or
head of the family
having legal rights that trumped all
no matter how disadvantageous they were
Ricker's dad died a long time ago
These pictures are of the wallet he left behind
and so we should say
these people are
Ricker, his mam and her mam
Ricker's dad's parents died before he was born
this gran died on
Christmas Eve
when he was 4
his dad died when he Ricker was around 28
and his mam died when he was around 33

As Ricker approaches his
bury by date
The bank have a handy blank next to
date of death
on his file...
he is appalled by how much tat of his own he is surrounded by
he spends his declining days
trying to put right the damage
his mam and his grandad did to his gran's house
knowing that when he goes
there will be a week when the garden is
full of rubbish skips
no matter what he does
the house will be sold as a
fixer up er
and gutted
but it keeps him interested in life
Ricker wants it noted that his in the picture gran was
born a Wright
Wright's Biscuits
of Tyne Dock, South Shields
were one of the constituent companies that came together
to form
United Biscuits
but Eva Wright
married beneath her
hitched her wagon to an ambitious retailer who
only ever had the one shop - in Tyne Dock
a haberdasher
a credit haberdasher
and on a night
Masie
Eva's daughter Eva May - Ricker's mum
would come home in tears because she had been around
all the houses in Tyne Dock
and been told that nobody had any money to
pay their instalments and arrears on
the credit they had taken out to 'buy'
haberdashery - like anything woven
and any accessories thereto
haberdasher - dealer in small articles of dress
ribbons, needles etc
here's the thing
in those days - the mid 1920s
there really wasn't any sort of
Experian or credit cards, or even bank accounts
in a sense
the haberdasher would not know
how much 'tick' you had with the butcher or the baker
or the green grocer
and a couple of years without
nick-knacks
was a very different thing from a couple of days without food
poor credit in the dress shop
did not mean poor credit at the grocers
but here's the thing
the MEN were out of work in the shipyards
but the women were not
out of work in
the biscuit factory
you could say
biscuits and bustles
eventually Masie's father's wholesaler died
and the son ended HIS credit
so he moved to Redcar to be a clerk in the
weighbridge
at the steel works

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 - Ł2,000 per year
expenses not subject to income tax - Ł20,000 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
after location filming on
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 Flipper
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?

14th September 2020

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

We have noted that some American documentaries quote
very heay things in pounds
like millions of pounds of aluminium
so we were about saying
Fort William can produce a
million pounds of aluminium a year
and then it got confused
we seem to have lost some zeros
40,000 tonnes is 40,000,000 kilos and so
around 100 million pounds
so that's a year, not a week
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

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 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

There could be a small window in time when
we could refer to this as a
Wall E
lockdown
a more lasting description would be
Bread and Circuses
it is really quite difficult for the
'expert'
to understand
why if people are in lock down
not active
do they need
more food?

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 made reference earlier to
The Blair Administration
asking Law Enforcement
What laws would you like?
whatever the answer
it boils down to
laws, rules and regulations that are
easy to enforce
irrespective of the harm, benefit, relevance to
the Public Good

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

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

we've had a bit of a think about the origins of
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

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
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
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 thought that since the original web site is
Redcar based
we would do a little bit of 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 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
Watson 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 western 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

we are not going to pretend at this point
to be experts on current Japanese culture
but this is the point where things get darker and we
cite
The Other Victorians
by
Steven Marus
we could quote the young woman who
having been given a sovereign for
showing the man opposite in a cab
what she kept under her skirt
asked him the next time for something
smaller that wouldn't raise such suspicions at home
however
to more serious matters
a lot of people - young men - with a lot of
New Money
got into
Gambling and whoring
mid-day marriages
lots of people who had the
disposable income to be
patrons of sex workers
commercial sex
all of this came with an uprising of
sexually transmitted infections
even today we see 'scientists' trying to
'prove' that CoViD-19 is
the result of intimate contact
all the hand washing malarkey
and not a respiratory infection
non the less
we would concede that
syphilis and gonnorrea
were and are in the HPV category
the problem with this
in Victorian times
was a fairly widespread belief that
sex with a young, clean, virgin
fresh up from the country
was a cure for STIs
and so
the little sex agents would
hide a little pouch of blood
under the pillow
and introduce it to the spot
at a suitable moment to show that
their
cherry had just been busted
hence, thus it follows
when a woman walks down the aisle
dressed in white
the Tudor concept of
there ain't no tiny little people lodging in my womb
is mingled with the Victorian concept
Tonight Mathew, I shall be
curing you of the clap
the reference to Japan is that we understand
they still do this
on TV
in sort of
Candid Camera
type shows
we're not checking the name
but if Henry 8 felt worse after on marriage
perhaps this cure 'hadn't worked' and
Jane Seymour? was being accused of an
assassination attempt
by failing to cure him of his disease

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, Wilkins, 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

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 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

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
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?
so when the
gay bashing slot
is removed from the media template
it has to be replaced with the
paedo bashing slot

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

at this time we are still musing about why
people can apparently
dial 999 or 911 or whatever and
instantly become a
CLIENT
of Law Enforcement
picking up from this above idea is that
perhaps the emergency services are still
locked into a society where
only middle class people have
access to a 'phone
it really isn't that long ago that
people offering jobs
insisted on a
land line 'phone number
in the candidate CV - job application
and wanting bank statements printed out on
the bank's headed note paper
the idea of not pre-judging events
on the basis of
how they first hear about them

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

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
Banborough 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
traditionally 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
already been on?
but the point is
pneumonia WITH influenza
plaice WITH 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

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< R> back channels
in the world of diplomacy
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

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

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

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

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

27th April 2020
many many people are familiar with the concept of
being stuck between
a rock and a hard place
we see this reflex deployment of
child abuse and the murder of women
whenever the police and their cohorts
want to attract our attention
for 'children are being abused'
read
oi, over 'ere, listen to me
and certainly not
excuse me, can I have your attention?
that aside
along with their
scum of the earth
anybody sez anything I don't understand...
I'll 'ave 'em sectioned
or branded a
fantacist
we are will inject the Welsh for politician here
the Welsh for Member of the Assembly is
phonetically...
whiney dog
and for once we must note the spelling
Auf Wiedersehen Pet
other than the police impostor syndrome
that is
I'm way out of my depth here so
time to kick some shins
this problem of the
whiney dog wimin
when our Ricker was a little boy
according to his mother
telling him later
she refused to smack him when he was a todler
because
he enjoyed it too much
these days
ninety odd percent of men who have a job have
what a century ago would have been described as
a bobby's job
and is now termed
a desk job
men in general don't get up at four o'clock in the morning
to go to work
not expecting to see hearth and home ever again
and so the concept of the man as
the provider
and
having martial rights
has largely evaporated
but in some sense there is a lingering concept of
if she likes sex so much
maybe I should
give her something she doesn't like so much
in return for her
bed and board
maybe I should beat her up like I do me mates down the club
and so the rock and the hard place
one the one hand
the home where she gets beatings not sex
and the workplace where
she is constantly plagued by her
impostor syndrome
want the man who beats you - physically - out of your home
or the man who beats you - intellectually - out of your workplace
and so often it appears that
ousting the capable from workplaces
is cheaper and easier than
a one adult per home, policy
and here we reflect the concept
I would like to treat my cubicle at work
as if it were my home
to be Queen of all I survey
the world has a feeling that it is more appropriate to
socially engineer the workplace
than the home
and so
professions and workplaces develop
implicit
wimin only
policies
and in the van (guard)...
universities and schools
setting the mould for all future generations
is the satisfaction of
victimhood
greater
when physically beaten
or when subject to
non physical coercive control
coercive control - something women are past masters at
but
can never be accused of

we wish to skim a line between
properly researched and peer reviewed
and
something people can understand that
doesn't drive us into the ground with
the fact checking burden
in that context, first
the platisma muscles
are involved in nodding your head down
but they mainly
open your mouth
and are to that extent, technically the
antagonists to the masseter muscles
but here we want to fly a kite
about the relationship between viruses and people
viruses don't PLAN anything
think of a virus as a fashion item
you design it, you make it< you put it on sale
and it either flies of flops
it has no conscious involvement in
how popular or successful it is
what we are not going to research is how to classify
Corona virus 2019
some corona viruses are
'flu viruses
some are
common cold viruses
we, as opposed to the specialists in this field
don't know the difference between
the common cold versions
and the influenza versions
their genetic codes will have been published but
life's too short
if you were designing corona viruses
and NOBODY is
you may feel that the common cold versions are
more successful than the 'flu ones
the lame brains of the military bent
may think that the 'flu ones are
'more successful'
because they do more damage
what you have to remember is
these are parasites
and successful parasites
do not kill their host
like mistletoe
and sometimes
like corals
it's hard to tell which is host and which parasite
for example an alga living in an animal that can grow
a calcified shell
we know that in the past all sorts of biological weapons research
has been disguised as
Research into the Common Cold
but The Common Cold does not bother us much
and so we don't try very hard to defeat it
it's not smallpox after all
a common cold corona virus triggers in us
the streaming cold
reaction that protects us from
well not from the virus parasitising our nasal and oral cavity surfaces
but protects us from having that class or virus
penetrate into
our lungs
where is can do real damage
by treating lungs tissue
in a way that it is 'designed' to
fit to
treat the more robust
and
DRAINED
tissues of our nasal cavities
in this theory we define
a 'flu virus
as
a virus that slips - inadvertently - through
the defences that
trap and corral
a corona virus we would otherwise classify as a Common cold virus

and so, grasshopper...
we should consider
the wart
there are viral and fungal infections
of the skin
that never venture deeper into the body
than the skin
consider a person who has a cough and or a fever
amd suspects they have CoViD-19
and test positive
and recover from their symptoms
BUT
the corona 2019 virus was trapped in their nose
and some other virus was in their lungs
giving them their symptoms
they would, could develop immunity to that
other virus
but
Corona 2019 would be like a wart to them
never seen by their immune system
and so they harboured the virus but
only after they symptoms subside..
do they become
infected with it
because the virus eventually slid down to the areas of
thinner, more delicate membranes
much closer to blood capillaries
in the lungs

24th April 2020
Newcastle University
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England
are doing some interesting research
they are taking samples from sewers
and testing them for
Corona Virus 2019
1 presumably to protect the operatives of
Northumbrian Water
working in their water treatment works an sewers
2 if they are finding traces...
it gives the lie to the idea that
soap and water and detergent
and other things put into sewers
destroy viruses

GDP
stands for Gross Domestic Product
it refers to the monetary size of the
turnover of the - British - economy
we have been told for decades now that
the vast majority of economic activity in the UK
consists of
service industries
particularly financial services
particularly in London
and hence it was a no-brainer to
shut down the
trivial
industrial sector
when a contagious disease problem arose
here's the question
if all the people involved in
service industries
and let's remember, even if the media forget
there are service industries such as
architecture, industrial design, etc. etc.
that are neither manufacturing nor financial
if all these people are now
working from home
completely unaffected by the lock-down
why should GDP shrink?
we suspect that we will have to wait some time for the
April to June 2020 figures to be published
but they, HMRC, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs will
already have the March numbers and soon have the April figures
we are guessing that
London Locals
will have lost their jobs - well their work
in sandwich bars and on the transport network
but a lot of that work will have been transferred to
commuter towns

we've had a thought
Our Ricker's had a thought
when the history is written
he is wondering
will CoViD-19
be referred to as
summer 'flu
it does seem that a lot of people have not been able to
shrug it off in spring
on the other hand...
people with mild to moderate 'flu
in the past
have never been told to
stay in doors and pretend that it's still
winter
what about
hay fever as a natural antidote to influenza??
it is a fact
perhaps an irrelevant, misleading fact
but it is a fact that most of the people who are dying from
CoVID-19
are the people who are being
shielded
from it
second fact
the shielding isn't working
disputed fact
the new treatment does not work as well as the old one
feed a cold
starve a fever
one interpretation of that is
if you have a mild infection...
build yourself up, chicken soup and exercise
if you have a serious infection
go lie down in a darkened room
it's pretty clear that almost everybody who gets CoViD-19
gets a mild illness for at least week
and that does bring
differential treatment
into question
do the people who go on to develop a serious illness
handle the mild illness differently?

as at 22nd April 2020
we have not seen any pictures or footage of
healthy looking people who have
died or come near to death from CoViD-19
and most of the people who have been described as
having no underlying health issues
really demonstrate how
being overweight to the point of
morbid obesity
and having undiagnosed type two diabetes
counts as having no underlying medical issues
we should just run over the problem
take the throat of a typical adult male
we expect to see an
Adam's apple
if you can't see it - overweight
but that is not the main issue here
put your thumb one side of the larynx
the Adam's apple
and the fingers the other side
between thumb and fingers you have the larynx
and some skin
and two muscles...
the left and right
platisma
they have to do with pulling your head down
when you nod
you can hardly feel them at all
they are really quite thin sheet muscles
if you are not very very very fat
if you grip your throat at one side of the wind pipe
so that you grab
skin, fat and platisma
between thumb and fingers
you can get an idea of the double up thickness of a
platisma muscle
there is a similar pair of muscles at the sides of your face
the masseter muscles
these close your jaws
ths sort of sheet muscle is the sort of muscle you use
to breath
the diaphragm
The diaphragm has a problem
it is used to expand the lungs but
BUT
it is not attached to the lungs
in the way that the masseter muscles are attached to
yer jaws
the diaphragm is arranged like
two analogies here
one more universal than the other
the more universal one is
a washing line
or the cable on a suspension bridge
lungs above the cable
guts below
to breath in the diaphragm contracts
and becomes
more like a plate
and less like a bowl
the place where you put fat in is your belly
more than anywhere else
if the bowl of the diaphragm is
constantly full of fat
the muscles that is like a plate and not
big strong and thick like
the muscles in your limbs
eventually gives up
the more restricted analogy is
those
ratcket straps truckers use to
strap a load onto a lorry, wagon, truck
or anything
a point is reached where
if the load was not a
solid box
but a huge spring
no matter how tightly you cinch the
ratchet strap
the spring will not compress at loading
as much as it might in transit
because the other large flat muscle of your tum
your six pack
will be fighting the diaphragm
to try to compress and move
yer fat gut
flabby six pack - flabby diaphragm
and that is not the only option
when you buy and eat
ribs
beef or any other meat, lamb, pork
you can move your ribs
closer together as you rib meat
your inter costal muscles
contract
we need another analogy
consider a bucket
consider half a bucket
half cut away vertically
consider the bucket handle
with the half bucket
upside down
that is your chest
your chest if the half bucket is
nailed upside down to a wall
the wall being your spine
half bucket upside down...
when the handle swings free it
approaches the wall
your ribs sag down and towards your spine
now forget the half bucket and
imagine a stack of bucket handles
attached to your spine
in the middle section
the T spine
the thoracic spine
if the top handle stuck out horizontally
because it was fixed to your clavicles
collar bones
and there were muscles in between each
bucket handle, or rib
and the next
if the muscles contract the handles, ribs
move closer together
and the lower ones move
because they are separately attached to your spine
at the ends
the middle bit of the handle
the sternum - breast bone
moves
away from your spine
inflating your lungs
not if there six inches of blubber
encasing yer six pack
it's another price we pay for
verticality
yer pigs is designed to carry their blubber
between their legs
below their guts
humans don't go in for crawling around on
all fours
so our breathing is affected by
blubber that weighs on our ribs when we
lie on our backs
and
inhibits our puny little inter costal muscles when
we want to move our ribs away from
our spines
being overweight is a whole hill of bother
a pre-existing medical condition

for a variety of reasons
various health and wealth statistics are
collected a variety of areas with conflicting boundaries
we have s glimpse of
North East and Yorkshire
having quite a high number of people in hospital
due to Corona virus illness
around the 2,000 mark
and probably a very similar number of deaths
on the other hand
James Cook the regional trauma centre for
Tees valley and North Yorkshire
to late April 2020
recorded 130 CoViD related deaths
and we have an explanation for that
North East and Yorkshire includes what we could call
The Leeds - Bradford area
the culture on Teesside is....
the target is a home of their own for
every adult
the culture in the Leeds - Bradford area is
security in numbers
big extended families including several generations
sharing
sharing a kitchen, sharing a bathroom
social distancing work a treat on Teesside
not so much in
West Yorkshire
and so...
not so much an ethnic but a cultural split
and not so much a
rich - poor split either
as so often
the
functionally illiterate
are not
really good at taking advice
they, as they say, are best
nudged towards thinking that
best practice
is
cool

we think of
Jimmy Nail
we continue to fail to spell
Aufhueidesein Pet
and we consider the
troops stationed in Germany after the Second World War
and the contractors working in Germany later
and we see the logic in the idea that
the culture in
Scotland
North East England
and
Germany
to be aligned
and with culture....
epidemiology
the fate of infections
and
we consider
the contrast between
take-away food culture
versus
cafe culture
we consider a stratum in society where
many people eat take away
don't have a dining room at home
eat on the fly
have
en-suite bathroom facilities
and consider their life style
the most challenging for an infectious epidemic
and of course
beer halls
when Germans socialise
they tank up on alcohol

back on the 20th April
the BBC in North East England
produced a report expanding on a
news item about the
independent elected mayor of Middlesbrough
that they had broadcast the previous day
we have referred before on the idea that
a third of the residents of Middlesbrough are
functionally illiterate
we have also commented that we believe that
it is our understanding that
everybody in North East England - including Middlesbrough
plus most people in Yorkshire
who are on benefits
are on
Universal Credit
how the hell is anybody on Universal Credit
who has been on Universal Credit
for months if not years...
going to have their finances affected by
the CoViD-19 epidemic - pandemic?
they have no job to loose
they are exactly where they were at Christmas 2019
so how does some
'think' tank
come to the conclusion that
Middlesbrough will be the UK town that will be
hardest hit
by CoViD-19?
there is only one answer that makes any sense whatever
this think tank must think that Middlesbrough
has the crown for
workingandclaiming
the black economy
working for tips
guvvie jobs
that is not a helpful suggestion
and you know what
what with VAT and Tax Returns
if the people of Middlesbrough
have been spending more than they have had in
in benefits and declared income...
perhaps that is where the idea came from
and here's the thing
goods bought in Middlesbrough shops
could be bought by anybody if paid for by cash
but credit card, debit card, and on-line purchases
especially if for delivery to Middlesbrough addresses
will inform the picture of
local wealth or poverty
wherever there is a big hospital on the patch of
a small local authority
if you divide the number of CoViD deaths
around 150 for James Cook
to 20th April
into the population of Middlesbrough
and not into the population of
Tees Valley and North Yorkshire
you get quite a high per capita death rate
soooo
they know you know
the government like
there used to be a big deal with the likes of
South Tees
people used to buy things
out of the catalogue
20 or 38 interest free payments
100 payments with added interest
Littlewoods
others
and the stores had their own delivery vans
Blue vans called White Arrow
had a white arrow on a blue van
and you could tell coppers and the steelworkers didn't buy from the catalogue
what their wives did with the
housekeeping,
another matter
they bought from
Binns, Newhouses, Wright's Tower House
Tower House on Linthorpe Road was demolished and it's
McDonald's now
and one of the others is called
Debenhams
now
never was no House of Fraser
nor Harrods
on Teesside
anyway you could tell coppers didn't buy from
the catalogue because one day in the run up to Christmas
a White Arrow van was hi-Jacked
in Grangetown
and the parcels taken
and the copper investigating said
loads of kids won't get their Christmas presents this year
you fail to deliver...
you have to re-deliver
Ricker's brother Peter's best mate was
boss of the NatWest and got
cashiered for
the Blue Arrow Affair
easy to confuse...
when he was a lad Ricker made twenty five quid 'cos
his brother was so
dog with two tails when he first got his
Couttes Bank account that he sent Ricker a cheque
for his birthday - just the once
just to prove to his - their - dad that he had
made it
Couttes no longer belongs to NatWest
couldn't have Couttes - one branch in Charring Cross Road?
belonging to the government

we don't know this....
we understand that
in mid April 2020
the current owners
is that Ineos? no idea, Huntsman?
the current operators of
Olefin 6, previously known as Olifine6
on Wilton International, in Redcar
shut it down
due to
they only have - by reputation -
ten days storage capacity for
petroleum products
we have not herd that they have decide to
do routine maintenance during the CoViD scare
but they probably have

20th April 2020
we don't normally take the trouble to say
told you so
but we have to point out that we have said
don't rely on soap and water as a defence against
viruses
and that advice must be taken in tandem with the
undisputed decision and advice that
clinical gowns
cannot safely be
washed
to a safe usable condition
it's a worry
that those who advocate
soap and water
are very firmly amongst those who
do not back up their 'advice' with
data

we are at this time looking at
old farts' predictions
about CoViD-19
and what we see right now is a sub species of the
The Army demands re-armament funding to prepare to
re-fight the war we just won
this particular version is also a version of
'out of an abundance of caution...'
we will recall the worst thing that is remotely similar
that has ever happened before
and assert that
History is about to repeat itself
and the problem with this is illustrated by
shall we say
The Tay Bridge Disaster
what we can say about that is that the bridge that was built
in a little English valley a while before the
ill fated version of the Tay Bridge
dodged a bullet
there's a town on the M54 a bit north west of
Birmingham in England
we could say the town is in Shropshire
and a part of it is called
Ironbridge
and the whole of it - the town - is called
Telford
New York, New York
so good they named it twice
New York City is in The State of New York
like
London, England
New York, New York
and so
The Iron Bridge, is in Ironbridge
THE Ironbridge
and from today's perspective
we could say that The Iron Bridge is lucky to survive
for one very simple reason
it was built from a kit of parts that were cast
in shapes almost identical to
the shapes carpenters would have cut oak trees into
to create a kit form bridge
what the people who built
The Iron Bridge did was to
build a wooden bridge kit and
instead of erecting it
they used it as a pattern to create moulds
into which to
cast iron
because they knew nothing else
and cast iron does not react to
forces, stresses and strains
the way that oak does
and when the idea was scaled up to create the
first, ill-fated Tay Bridge
it got blown away
with great loss of life
because it needed storm force winds plus
a massive passenger train running over it
to destroy it
and so the subtle difference between
those who fail to remember history
are bound to repeat it
and
those who fail to STUDY history
are bound to repeat it
the members of the
old farts' society
are presently absolutely convinced that
because the
influenza epidemic of 100 years ago
came in three increasingly worse
waves
the current pandemic has to have two more
even worse waves
and that they will come before a vaccine
can be developed
and hence
We're all doomed
the Chinese epidemic came after thirty years of
economic boom
not thirty years - Boar to First World - war
the European epidemic
comes 12 years after the European economic bust
the economies and the peoples of China and Europe are
probably in the best state of readiness to confront
a pandemic
that could be imagined
no sense here of nations on their knees
awaiting a
coup de grace
elsewhere?
South America?
who knows but not China or Europe - including the British Isles
there is no doubt that this pandemic
requires a response
however
although the threat is the same - almost identical
an influenza virus few if any people have
specific
immunity to
but ninety odd percent of the people in its path
bear no resemblance to the
folk liberated from
Belsen concentration camp
or who survived the construction of
The Bridge over the River Quai - Kwaii
but what is the relative health quotient of
a secret smoker - Bullingdon Club former member
and a concentration camp survivor?
we need to fight today's battles not those of the past
in medicine as much as in anything
we see people die on training exercises
yomping over the moors in
SAS selection tests
these were, are fit people, doing just that bit too much
like Douglas Adams or Andrew Marr playing squash
this being a Prime Minister business
isn't difficult enough for me
I'll do it on ten Churchillian cigars and two bottles of brandy a day
just like yomping with twenty stone in my back pack
without water and in 30 degree heat
and so
out of an abundance of 'caution'
we have to say
The Chinese are lying about there being no second wave
we must remain locked down until
either there is a second wave in Europe
or
we develop a vaccine

we are trying - not very hard - to remember
in the past did the media refer to themselves as
The Fifth Estate
they see themselves as a part of government
what they clearly do is to think
1 that their boss should be richer than any politician
Lord Rothermere, Condad Black, whoever, should be richer than
The Rees Mogg clan
to mix generations
2 that senior politicians and administrators should be
even lees well educated and dense than their
op. ed. scribes
and so
with the BBC...
when Tweedledee is indisposed
they fill their news schedule with
clips of Tweedledum
and we note that
'cos thiis a war on
there is no Points of View style analysis of
what the punters think of the
output of the propaganda machine
ITMA
when there was a real war on there was ITMA
Its That Man Again
in which context....
we will delve a little deeper into
immunology 101
we consider the merger of
police and fire services
'cos there's nowt ta do
cops are issued with cruisers
and told to
go play with the traffic
when they take over the Fire and Rescue Service
they don't want the actual emergency service people to
continue to watch telly and do fry-ups
between shouts
they want them to cruise the streets too
in their big red trucks that can't get down your street
the immune system...
some things can be picked up in a blood sample
think of those things as
police cruisers
let's just say
young people
always up for a bit of action
bored with soaps
always on the Twitter looking out for some fun
older people
engrossed in soap opera story lines
need to hear the big loud clangy bell to
get them off the sofa
the immune system
keeps the
Big Guns
tucked up safe the th garage until
the minions twitter back with some sort of alarm
what we have to think of when regarding the immune system is
a DJ or MC
disc jockey or master of ceremonies
who has junked the CD - compact disc - collection
and does requests from
Spotify
the big big problem with the immune system is
auto immune disease
when we are born be have - our immune system has
access to every
lets step back here
imagine that for every product of living activity
there is a poison
imagine that actually there are not many poisons but each poison is
confined, secluded, locked away
by a door that can be opened by any one of
an almost infinite number of keys
we have tried to explain the concept of
SELF
before
imagine that some of the keys that are capable of
releasing the Wrath of God
are bits of YOU
or more exactly
MATCH
are replicas of
bits of you
to stay alive
to avoid auto immune disease
you need to
destroy those keys
before they lead to them causing you yourSELF
being destroyed
and there is a developmental period when
a window in time
EVERYTHING
your immune system comes into contact with
has its key destroyed
any future contact with bits of stuff that were
present at roll call during that window
will not
set off the alarms
the problem with this is that this roll call is not
very early
as an example
sympathetic ophthalmia
if some of the contents of one eye are
released into the blood stream through trauma or disease
your immune system can launch an autoimmune attack on the
fellow eye
and destroy that too
so, but
people keep recording
New Music
it has to be added to Spotify
say there was some sort of
Chinese Wall
between
Spotify in China and Spotify in Europe
somebody in Europe makes a request to a DJ who has
an all zones access to Spotify
she play some weird stuff
and everybody covers their ears...
but what if it's
an ear worm
and the crowd can't get it out of their heads?
major bummer
and so...
the reason why young uns can be exposed to a novel virus
and not pack out their blood stream with
antibodies
as older folk would is
they's chilled bout this
they got it covered
they know the combination for the lock
no need to clog up the roads with
big red trucks
laters
BUT...
immunology 102
most of us
got a spleen
it's a very bloody article
get a whack in the guts
and your spleen is the major candidate to cause
internal bleeding
so lot of trauma victims have it out
'co folk don't drop down dead without it
it does a thing
yer spleen does
a ot of people - surgeons
regard the spleen as not much different from
the appendix
a bit or a liability and no use to God nor Man
yer spleen is the re-cycling depot of your
blood circulation
our Ricker had an enlarged spleen
and so did his mam
and he had this interesting conversation with
Keith Barker
a GP
Ricker sez
when I was still growing I had splenomegally
Keith sez
you can't have had a spenectomy
there would be a scar
I didn't say splenectomy, oh never mind
before Ricker gave his mam big floppy tits
by his requirement for milk....
his mam didn't like
swimming cozzies
cos
her ribs - especially on the left side
stuck out
further than her tits
she had had childhood infections and splenomegally
at an age when her ribs were just
green sticks
and were moulded out into a bulge by her spleen and to some extent
her liver - on the right hand side
and so
AND SO
get an infection when you are young and your spleen and liver
clear way the mess - the evidence
get an infection when you are older and
you will have heard of
sclerosis of the liver
not non digestive components of your insides are
spleen, pancreas, liver
they are the support system for your blood supply
and they all get sclerotic
and their work rate falls
pancreas problems - main symptom, diabetes
so in the elderly
infection leave
more debris, for longer, in the blood stream
and that can be detected and
it can cause micro embolisms
minor blockages
in the lungs and the brain
hastening death
and so
just because you can't find debris from an infection in
the blood of the young
does not mean that they do not have immunity to that pathogen

it's a bit frustrating that some
cultural references are universal
and some are very generation specific
so taking the universal idea of the
Swiss Army Knife
and the generation specific equivalent of the
Thunderbirds
Thunderbird 2 pod selection sequence....
where is your Spotify?
your cloud storage?
it is in your
bone marrow
all that pluripotetiality
wide range of possible options
lies with the 'mother cells' in your bone marrow
and as we said to damp down autoimmune disease
we destroy keys
but perhaps we should say
door bells
when you
develop immunity
during an infection or as the result of an
immunisation
you cause a proliferation of the specific types of
antibody production cells in your bone marrow
they don't continually produce antibodies
there are just more mother cells sitting waiting to produce
the antibodies that are needed to tackle a particular
antigen
so you can't measure enhanced immunity from the
titre
concentration
of the antibody in circulation
you can only detect
presence
and as we say
a healthy spleen will do good tidy-up
you see there are generations of
bone marrow cells
granny cells don't produce antibodies
mother cells produce daughter cells that
produce specific antibodies
immunity consists in having more mother cells
primed and ready to produce
huge numbers of specific daughter cells
at the drop of a hat
whenever that darn varmint shows its face again

14th April 2020
Ricker is old enough to have enjoyed the
'Kids Show'
as defined by the cast of
Mont e Python's Flying Circususus
The Goodies
the never quite made it as a partner in
Terrybly, Terribly, Boring & Dull
Solicitors
Tim Brook-Taylor
we like to do a Matt Cartoon style pun
if we were Matt we would draw this
Sam
drawing together Timbo and face masks

A muffled titter ran around the theatre
as played by
Marty Feldman
draw your own cartoon

we recall the old Sam about schools
schools are wonderful places
when the kids aren't there
and so to the police
now that the streets are empty
falling over themselves to do
foot patrols
empty streets don't
puncture their dream world

and of course we are being lied to
we don't need mass graves for virus victims
they are for the thousands of
women and children who are being
massacred in their own homes because they
have men in them

man
1960s definition
the schmuck who earns your child support
wife
2020 definition
the daft cow who earns your child support
wimin need wives 'cos
they've had men banned from all the
paying jobs

one of those strange examples of circular reality
has recently happened to our Ricker
he got a snail mail paper letter from
James Cook
not the actual James Cook but
the hospital named in his honour
and it was a copy of a letter originally written to
somebody else
it wasn't a mistake
it had been snail mail CC'd to Ricker
on purpose, a courtesy not a leak
and it had the prime recipient's details
lightly crossed through
what was interesting about it was
it was from a
hospital consultant
and
included in the top right hand corner
the email address of that consultant's secretary
and the nature of the circularity?
a comment from a then soon to retire, male, psychiatric nurse
to our Ricker
a question
how come you CC'd this email - original to the then local MP
to your GP - general practitioner
how did you get his email address?
erm, he gave it to me...
to speed up communications....
and the reason for this comment is
the complete fiasco of the
CoViD-19 death rate reports
doctors have
believe it or not
it really is true
DESK TOP COMPUTERS
through which to
communicate with medical databases
how the fuck does somebody die and not get the death
registered the same minute via the data logging system
and yet we have something like Friday 10th April
980 CoViD-19 related deaths registered in the UK
BUT
over 700 of them did not happen between
5.00 pm on 9th and 5.00 pm on the 10th
they happened up to several weeks earlier
because the NHS still hasn't implemented
fax registrations - 24-7
billions of pounds worth of
ventilators
and the actual information depends of a
nine to five office clerk
and a typewriter
and so to
security and confidentiality
at what point do the
powers that be
determine that
you need security clearance to
READ
a doctor's emails
but NOT TO
know where to send them?
these are examples of the way that attitudes
snap from one extreme to another
another example is how the hacks want to
disclose secrets
the bozo from the media asking
when are you going to disclose those stats
and the patient boffin having to stand there and not say
they are, and always were and always will be
on the government Office of National Statistics web site
without any security clearance
you fuckwit

all of which leads us back to the constant theme of
just how long our Ricker
has been knocking around
because we have another of his
back in the day examples
the first computer language he learned
in any depth
was
COBOL
in fact it may have been the first language he ever learned about
his first experience of computers was at
Sunderland Polytechnic
but at Teesside Polytechnic he definitely started with COBOL
and the story was
if you were a computer programmer in those days
and with COBOL
you worked out what you wanted the computer to do and
with a pencil you filled in
data sheets
then you swanned off home leaving the data sheets
in the office
and the
data entry clerks
transcribed your program(me) instructions
onto
Jacquard cards
and somebody
fed them into the card reader
actual cardboard sheet cards
into the guts of the
main frame
and you went to your
dumb terminal
and issued a command to the main frame to
run your code
and when it didn't work
you wrote some more data sheets and ordered up some more cards
and there came a time when
new fangled
high level languages such as
BASIC and PASCAL came along and you
entered and edited your code for
digital storage
right there at the terminal
and a room became vacant in the polytechnic
the one where the data clerks had worked
and there were
redundancies
or there would have been redundancies
if the union hadn't negotiated
re-deployment
and
natural wastage severance
amongst the data entry clerks
and so...
we have fax in hospitals
because
Dolly and her friends
know how to use a fax machiene
and aren't ready for retirement yet

something that has struck us is
these runners and bikers
are supposed to be running and cycling
for the good of their health
but they can't do
social or individual distancing
for the good of their health
a lot of them do look really quite fit
we do wonder how long it would take some of them
to achieve the
fat bastard status
that got the Prime Minister
a hospital bed
if they gave up
what we can't understand is why they
if they are
adrenaline junkies
have not caused a world wide
rowing machine shortage
we conclude that a lot of them are not
out for the good of their health
but
out on the pull
like a game of musical beds
if you ain't got a partner when the music stops...

and another thing
for all the world it does appear that this crisis
discloses a lot of 'medics' as
undercover journalists
who have gone to all that trouble to qualify and get jobs
in the health service
in order to
have a platform from which to attack the Tories
however caring and keen to spend other people's money they are
would you recruit any of them
from down the pub to help you
fix, fettle, mend your car?
they seem to all be
why haven't the government fixed this yet merchants
like AA, RAC, Green Flag, operatives who tow you to a garag
200 miles from home...
they seem to be utterly clueless in matters
scientific and medical
and overflowing at the gunwales on
social injustice

this is a very accurate but not very relatable analogy
to all these medics
their 'work'
science, medicine, etc
is like
figure skating
and politics is
ice dancing

half a century ago the UK was a very different place
there was and still is a particular
Religious Minority
called
Jehovah's Witnesses
they were and are a minority
back in those days being a representative of
a minority
was not a recipe for
fame and fortune
we do not know the numbers
but we do reckon that there have always been and still are
a whole lot more Moslems than JWs in the UK
we refer to fifty years ago because at that time
the Cathy Come Home tendency amongst the
chattering classes
recognised JWs as a minority but
designated them as
a minority suitable for persecution
not a elite
just a minority with deeply held beliefs
insisting on having 'their children' withdrawn from
lessons on evolution
was not the sticking point
the cause celebre was
JW parents denying their children
blood transfusions
on instruction from scripture
the contrast with today is the
culturally dominant minority - Islam
we have seen very simple science
alcohol based sanitisers
versus
soap and water
and the chattering BBC
and the
'there are no winners here'
Prime Minister
we get scientific evidence for
copper killing pathogens
and no evidence about the relationship between
pathogens and soap
because...
because
well it is interesting
ancient peoples cleaned their skins by
rubbing on oil, fat, or grease
and scraping it off complete with top layer of skin
here in the absence of the Internet we are
into our Ricker's mind and not his books...
they scraped the oil and skin with a
stridule
not in the OED oxford English Dictionary
not the printed version anyway
they scrapped the mucky oil off with
a locust's leg
and then a locust-leg shaped implement
and then
they discovered that if they mixed
wood ash
from the camp fire
into the oil
it worked better
and wood ash is an alkali, a caustic
and soap was born
and then, when they found water
in bathing quantities
they discovered the lather
all very good but all about
exfoliation
not anti-sepsis
not about
treating wounds
one of the earliest wound treatments were
moss
and
Stockholm Tar
that is a particular moss
sphagnum moss
what is quite interesting is the origin or the word
alcohol
a'l col
no
al-koh'l
the power of
antimony
to turn eyes into those
huge great things
them a rabs fall for
powder of antimony for staining the eyes
the first
eye shadow and kinda
toxic
like English women in the 17th ? century?
trying to make themselves
pale and interesting
by using lead white as foundation on their faces
and rotting there faces in the process
how we got from
al-koh'l
to alcohol we don't know
but
antimony - toxic
alcohol - antiseptic

if you accept that
200 Sunday 5th April deaths are not recorded until
Monday 6th
and not reported until
Tuesday 7th April
then - give or take a handful
we have had in the UK
650 CoViD-19 related deaths per day
for nearly a week we see no evidence that
hospital bed occupancy has done anything other than
reflect that
perhaps at around 6,500 at any one time
there seems no reason to presume that this
the behaviour of the UK population
in respect to CoViD-19
will change, suddenly or otherwise
and we would remark that the average number of deaths in the UK is
15,000 per week
and at present we have
12,000 per week
and we would expect this lower than aerage number in
mid-spring
and so CoViD-19 has not affected the death rate
and this is between four and five percent of deaths
being of people who have tested positive for
CoViD-19 in hospital

what we lack at the moment is numbers for
How many exhibits in the
Walt Disney Memorial Twilight Zones
?

it really so so fortunate that
hacks and politicians have such
short attention spans
they really do seem to think that
the world would grind to a halt if
there were no Prime Minister
at this point we think we should pick up another
little problem with
a little knowledge
people are saying
you can't destroy a virus by freezing it
because we store them by freezing them
here's the science as opposed to the 'science'
when you put something like food
into your domestic freezer
that something will cool quite slowly
and eventually freeze
and when you take it out
it will slowly thaw and
the instructions on your frozen food will say
don't re-freeze once thawed
and that is because
many - most? - items of frozen food are
flash frozen
if you run a lab and you want to preserve a
well for instance
a sperm sample or somebody's eggs
you flash freeze them by
dunking them into
liquid nitrogen
and the water instantly freezes into
tiny tiny little ice crystals
if you bung a slab of meat of a turkey
into your freezer at home
it takes hours for the meat to freeze solid and the
ice crystals are huge and
they burst the walls of all the cells they
grow in
destroying their
'viability'
we don't KNOW that freezing food and gear at home
destroys viruses
but it's a pretty good bet
and we wanted to add a note about the word
vaccine
do you know where it comes from?
vache
cow
cow pox to protect from small pox
or more directly
vacca Latin for cow

6th April 2020
we should try to draw attention to a conflict between
government and industry
CoViD-19 is a SARS infection
seeking a vaccine for this corona virus is like
buying a speed gun to outfit law enforcement that
can only clock the speed of
Ford cars
so that each cruiser - patrol car - has to be outfitted with
a different, separate speed gun for
every make and model of vehicle it may encounter on the road
it is engineering specificity
that takes time

we have no idea how to spell the name of a
male grooming product that was popular with
footballer style influencers in the 1960s
but if we say
Brylcreme
anybody who was around at the time will understand
there are any number of products available to counteract
frizz or fly away hair
and they can be described as
hair oil
we talk below about the little hairs that sweep dirt out of the lungs
well they won't do much sweeping if they have been
to use the terminology of the 1960s
plastered down with (hair) oil
and that - in the lungs - comes in the form of
vaping oil

people associated with Oxford University are so
bowed down with the weight of their
arrogance and self satisfaction....
that
it will be interesting to see their reaction
if they never, ever, get around to
testing and approving the
antibody testing kits that
the government has bought for them to
play with
in the sense that Oxford University is a
brand
it was interesting to see
Whitehall
turn to
Brand Dyson
rather than industry experts
for help with ventilators

betya don't know what
TMV
is
tobacco mosaic virus
like we said
viruses can cause variegation in green plants
and so...
if you put elements of a pathogenic virus into
the genetic code of a TMV virus and infect a crop of tobacco
you can harvest something that can be injected to
forewarn and pre-arm the patient's immune system to the existence of
that pathogen
it's not exactly necessary to get BAT
British American Tobacco
to do that but
if they want the positive publicity
to set against the negative around the probability that
the CoViD-19 death rate amongst smokers...
is relatively massive...

we have actual death rate figures for last weekend
Friday 260
Saturday 209
Sunday 180
Monday 393
and so some may say
Monday! a surge
but
BUT
if you add 209 and 180 and 393
and divide by 3
you get 260
and why/
consultants
team leaders
DON'T WORK WEEKENDS
and so
junior doctors don't switch off life support
until after they have consulted with
consultants
mostly
so consultants call life support
just like they call resus
and you get a backlog
Monday morning
for Tuesday's numbers
back to 260 come Wednesday?
looks like a plateau to us

here goes with a comment on
medical advice by
vox pop
a vox pop is an insert into a report that
quotes
the voice of the people
and these days to avoid accusations of
'upsetting somebody'
they are rarely if ever followed by and
expert rebuttal
we mine the magic mind of our Ricker for a classic example
The first time there was a fire in the
Chunnel
the Channel Tunnel
or
Trans Manche Link
between Dover and the mainland
all the lorry drivers who were involved
were packed off to a medical centre for
chest X-rays
and this medical centre was in France
and the drivers - a lot of them
were British with primary care doctors, GPs, family doctors
in the UK
so they were handed their X-rays to take back to the UK
for their primary health care practitioner to
add to their files
so yer 20th century equivalent of Dan Johnson
grabs one of these truckers and his X-ray
and the driver holds up the film to the camera
a bit like the
Dunblane Whinger
more recently flashing his hip replacement X-ray
at his mobile...
and declares
look at all that black
me lungs is full a soot
despite modern X-rays being
digital
because medics are used to reading
X-rays in
NEGATIVE
bones show up white
and spaces show up black
last week we had some
female
CoViD-19 survivor
bleating on about the black bits in her lungs
on TV
without correction

here is another problem
The problem of
DNR
in the UK a patient's notes can be marked DNR
DNR stands for
Do Not Resuscitate
and the point is that most patients with DNR on their record
a judged to be patients who would spend
one or two months in intensive care
and then die
and so
confronted with a patient in arrest
you have two categories to put them into
medical arrest
traumatic arrest
it is morally acceptable to
resuscitate a patient in
traumatic arrest even if they are DNR
so their heart stops because
a screen falls onto them in bed
or Sunderland score a goal
it is much more questionable to
watch them quietly slip away
and set about shocking them back to 'life'
throughout this episode
people will have DNR added to their records
what the government are seeking to do is
flag up very clearly that this will not be because of a
shortage of ventilators
and at a final reckoning
the government will want to see and show statistics that say that
the rate of DNRs did not increase during the crisis

30th March 2020
as it goes, perhaps quite randomly
long long after
Walt Disney
died his name lives on
what we don't know is
given that he had his, or some of his,
remains cryogenically preserved
so that he could be thawed out and
brought back to life
at some future
life imitating art
re-creation of one or more of his movies....
we are beginning to wonder whether there will be tanks for
other forms of
liquid air
installed at
the London City Airport
so that city types can vote after
Hotblack Desiatoo
spending a year dead for tax purposes
style
they get thawed out to return to their
yachts in the Caribbean
so far as we are concerned the purpose of
intensive care
is to give time for the connections
business, family, social
to put the deceased's
affairs in order
before filling in the
date of death box
in all the significant documentation associated with their demise
there is a concept in medical science
our Ricker's experience only stretches to a
rabbit
the concept is
the heart-lung preparation
more human versions include
brain dead
anencephalic
back in the days of
freak shows
there was a real live
Headless chicken
somebody had decided to kill the chicken for the pot
by chopping off its head
it kept wandering around
they were taken by this and
decided to drop food into the open gullet
it lived for quite some time
however, in all probability a technique was devised
to produce living, walking, headless chicken for
the paying public to gawp at
just as the media observe
The Nightingale Hospital in East London
this is not
dead man walking
this is
dead men rotting in hospital beds
death warmed up
you can keep these 'alsopeople' 'alive' for a couple of months
but
eventually they will need
ecmo, dialysis,
ECMO, Extra Corporial something or other
the walking dead may remember this as a
heart-lung machine
its PROPER use is during heart surgery
to take over from the heart and lungs whilst they are being operated on
but
The Freeman Hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne
use a version to keep children alive whilst they wait for a
transplant donor
they are mostly what are called
Berlin Hearts
to return to our current patients...
and they will still die from
multiple organ failure
morally, you should not put a patient on
life support
unless you have a clear plan about
what TEMPORARY problem you expect them to overcome
in the next three to four weeks
however, we have enough tales of
people waking from deep natural comas
how IS Michael Schumacher the F1 motor racing ace, doing?
to muddy the waters
but here is one important difference
the people who
come round months or years later
were quite young, fit and healthy at the time of
their accident
and in a sense
could have snapped out of it at any moment
most of these victims could at best
snap back out into
deep dementia and disability
not so easy
so we say about these people
on ventilators
are they awaiting a
lung transplant?
what we see is people who are waiting for
the straw that breaks the camel's back
for how many of these people will it be
an infection
for how many will it be
a fall
for how many will it be
Sunderland failing to get demoted?
and it is this
and not
two versions of the virus
that makes the difference between
a couple of packs of paracetamol
and a ventilator

our estimate
based on published government figures is that
the CoViD-19 disease outbreak in the UK will peak
on 7th April 2020
and that on that day
1,250 people will die from the disease

we are told there may be 20,000 deaths from
CoViD-19
that means that the projection is that
by the time there have been
10,000 deaths
we will have passed the peak
there was an aeroplane called
The Something or other Clipper
it was probably a Boeing 747
and it landed on a Scottish village called
Lockerbie
and it is assumed that that happened because
there was a bomb on board
and it landed at the end of a particular street
if it had happened on a Saturday afternoon or
on a day when one of the local children was
having a sleepover
one home or garden could have had a dozen members of one family
on site at the moment of impact
that would mean that the deaths would not be
evenly spread throughout the community
discounting the passengers and crew
there would be to that extent some element of
the random
in the death toll
that's very different from saying
this corona virus
settles in a person's lungs
if they have rubbish lungs they are at high risk
it is pretty rubbish to say the
probability of someone with good lungs dying from this
is the same as a person with rubbish lungs
if we simplify and add the number of people with
COPD - chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
and cystic fibrosis
we get a number pretty near the number of people at highest risk
and so
a country with so many million people has the prospect of
suffering so many deaths
population size relates to death toll
two differences
we have listed reasons for COPD to include
chemical and particulate intrusion to the lungs
at the 'moment' when CoVid-19 hits a country
the two factors are
what proportion of the population have COPD for historical reasons
and
how good has that country been to that date
at
keeping people with COPD alive
in a 'developing country' or war zone
you get COPD, you die
PDQ - pretty darned quick
and so in a country with a poorly developed healthcare system
you won't have many candidates for a
corona 19 mediated death
most of them will already be dead
and so an underdeveloped country may be
rated 'more successful' at dealing with CoViD-19
than a developed country

although this was intended for publication on
30th March
it was written earlier
and down to the next
30th March
this was written on 28th March
because some complete
lame brain
we understand his father has been diagnosed with dementia...
is now chair of the health committee of the
UK House of Commons
we have to have
why aren't we doing what they are doing
not science based
health policies
and so we have the shift to the
mushroom management method
keep 'em in the dark and
feed 'em bullshit
and so we
GUESS
that we are being fed figures for
number of people admitted to hospital
1 with respiratory distress - breathing problems
and
2 testing positive for presence of the SARS corona virus of the year 2019
and
3 dying on that date
and they give us an arithmetic series
24/March - day recorded, or day published??
422
25 march 463
26 March 578
27 March 759
28 March 1019
if we project this arithmetic series we get
29 March 1358
30 March 1693
31 March 2103
1 April 2588
2 April 3073
this is an arithmetic series
no reference to medicine or biology
the 'problem' is
you cn take a span of any number
a classic is
number of vehicles on UK roads
if we assume as above
exponential growth in
number of vehicles on UK roads
we won't use real numbers
can't be bothered to look them up
if we set up a series like this
2 million in 1950
4 million in 1960
8 million in 1970
16 million in 1980
32 million in 1990
64 million in 2000
you will see that
like sheep in Wales
there would be more cars on the raod
than people in the UK
by the year 2000
and?
it didn't happen
quell surprise
in the current case
so long as you restrict your data gathering to
people admitted with respiratory distress
you will run out of people with
COPD, lung cancer, cystic fibrosis, etc
long before you run out of
All Patients Admitted
which is why there is a peak
some will die some will recover
most will recover without joining the data set
the fact that they don't join the data set
because they come in with a broken leg etc.
gives the impression that the
ustoo
policy has worked

30th March
Bring out yer
valetudinarians

The Victorians had a word for it
valetudinarian
sickly, infirm
solicitous about one's own health
person disposed to live the life of an invalid
Tees Valley version
Smoggie
can't work
'ave you seen the muck in 'ere

most of the people tested for
presence of Corona 19 in the UK
have been tested on admission to hospital
most have proved negative
the number testing positive is
most of the 9,500 people testing positive
and so
the bulk of 9,500 admissions were positive
and less then 500 have died
we expect
more of the people who are admitted to test positive
and
more of the people who die in hospital to test positive
the proportion of both admissions and deaths are
expected to reach around 80 per cent by the end of the summer
the questions are
will there be more hospital admission
will there be more hospital deaths
averaged out over the next six months
the overarching question is
will the virus lead to more deaths over six months
or will it lead to
a normal summer death rate
concentrated into mid spring
and here is the final question
what are the Chinese doing with those
massive hospitals they built in a fortnight?
turn them into exhibition halls?
hence
hire expo
don't build more hospitals

no government can make life
entirely fair
it is clear that the current lockdown is being applied
mostly to those people who are easiest to lock down
however it needs to be remembered that the people who will be
most heavily affected will be
people operating in the
black economy
their goods and services will be in greater demand
but also much easier to observe
perhaps there should be a little app that
pops up and asks
are you sure you want to use the word
black
?
anyway...
in a country with a population size and type of the UK
we expect around 2,000 deaths per day
the pandemic is more ar process than an event but
in the grand sweep of time
it is reasonable to consider it alongside other
events
when we consider the difference between
died with the virus on them
and
died from the effects of the virus
it could be helpful to consider
deaths at the time of another event
just to illustrate the difference between
association
and
cause and effect
there will still be people alive who remember the
first moon landing
it was around 50 years ago
consider the period
two weeks before the moon landing
to
two weeks after the moon landing
in that time
2,000 people a day died - probably
and so
30,000 people dying that 'month'
some of them will have passed away
not knowing whether the mission went well
some of them will have heard the
good news
before they passed
learning about the outcome of the project had
almost no influence on their
length of life
or time of departure
but some may have had a
I can rest in peace
kind of resignation
and this virus thing has a similar dimension
died with the virus, died from the virus
consider our Ricker's dad
Tommy
Ricker made a batch of
elderflower wine
Tommy liked it
so Ricker and his mum decided to
give Tommy a glass of the wine
once every day
and not have any themselves
and
the inevitable happened
Tommy died less than a week after
the wine ran out
most routines will somehow
eventually be broken
lucky socks disintegrate
etc, etc
if there are
2,000 deaths a day in your country
it is when suddenly there are
3,000 deaths a day
that you should consider that
something is up
as we write...
around 40 people a day
are learning about the moon landings
before they pop their clogs
it's a worry
but it is also worth remembering
the whole exercise is designed to
protect the health service
not to
defeat the virus
in a sense the whole exercise is like
moving to
big school
and discovering
algebra
or perhaps we should say
geometry
even wordsmith Tweedledee
has discovered
antigen and antibody
but oh so sad to see him try to sell
Hobbit Talk
from his
old uni, Oxford
to the experts at a press briefing
there's this
how shall we say
Blue Skies Thinking
paper published by some people at Oxford
what do you think about that?
No, Prime Minister

one thing we can predict...
by the time this is published...
if the normal death rate for the UK is
2,000 deaths per day
if, IF
the death rate for April, May, possibly June
is
3,000 per day
in July and August it will be
1,500 per day
we will have
run out of critically ill people
temporarily
sometimes to some people the actual age of
The Wisdom of the Ages
can be a surprise
we are thinking of all these
young hacks
on the recieving end of
reader opinions
and not knowing what lis beneath some of the assumptions
one of the major things that people seem to be having trouble with is
why is a meeting of three people
just as much of a risk of
cross contamination
as a meeting of 300,000 people?
the reason why older people have trouble with this
is that if you were really quite young during
The Cold War
just after the end of the Second World War
you picked up quite a bit of
nuclear physics
and the concept - without going into too much detail
was that a
Nuclear Device
was that The Stranglers
anyway the basic idea of
how to set off a nuclear device was to
use an explosive charge within the payload of
Enola Gay
we can never remember the name of the second bomber
an A bomb and an H bomb
well in an A bomb
you have two intricately formed lumps of
fissile material
with a space between them
and behind each an exposive charge
and to set off the bomb you
detonate the two explosive charges
and this forces the two lumps of fissile material
togther
and the combined mass of the - weight of the
new single lump
exceeds the critical mass for that element
and the device
goes critical
as the reactor at Chernobyl did
and
wham, bang, thank you marm
that's where the oldsters get the idea that
there is a safe
number
rather than a safe distance
we should say
Chernobyl was the result of a
wonder what would happen if?
moment
whereas the more recent
Japanese reactor disaster was the result of combined with
storing spent fuel in the roof space
instead of sending it to
Sellafield
for reprocessing

It's sometimes interesting to listen to what
people say
and gain an insight into how their minds are working
take two concepts
social distancing
self isolation
it appears that on 24th March
most mobile 'phones
not particularly, subscribers
were sent a text saying
self isolate
to tell of Freudian Slip is when
people come on the telly and say
stay at home and wash your hands regularly
in how many of those people - who say that
is that a tell indicating that they see a virus as
an example of
spontaneous generation
if you are isolated at home
you are in one of two groups
you have the virus
you don't have the virus
what the heel does
washing your hands
have to do with
swapping groups?
see we create waste
we void waste in urine
people such as
Howard Hughes
who drank their urine to avoid
loosing vital essences
were unwise
but they were failing to get rid of
something newly generated
waste from their blood
by-products of their life processes
we don't
MAKE
viruses
we allow them to
MULTIPLY
they have to come from somewhere
in whatever quantity
no matter how small
we need
the seed

it puts one in mind of the question
why is the barnacle goose
called the barnacle goose?
before people understood
migration
there was a time in the year when there were
geese
an a time in the year when there were no geese
and so people searched for something that
resembled barnacle geese
and they found that barnacles had the same
black and white stripe pattern
so they concluded that
the geese hibernated as
barnacles
or all died and left barnacles as
eggs

Here we have a CoViD-19 case study
before this particular virus
got out of China
woman in her 80s spent
seven weeks in hospital with
pneumonia
last week she returned to hospital with pneumonia
and died within three days
could the hospital spare a bed for another seven weeks?
did they find a virus on her that wasn't there a couple of months ago?
did she get less intensive help
second time around
did she die from CoViD-19?
if so was that
Primary due to the virulance of the disease
or secondary to
increased pressures on the health service?

and all the while we have the
BYTs
Bolshie Yob Tickoes
who make up the medical profession...
peeling labels off supply boxes to
'generate' evidence that
The Tories are Killing People
but are they?
are they saying
if you don't let us stop treating yer granny
you may be dead from the 'flu
by Easter
?
we are all familiar with
tears brimming
tears rolling down cheeks
what most people don't consider is that
tears are constantly flowing and
draining into our noses
and so they take virus with them
whether or not we
touch our faces
and this is why they contain
lysozyme the enzyme that damages pathogens
and as we know
the rate at which tears are produced
varies
hence a streaming cold
BUT
the eyes are more delicate than the stomach and so
major pathogen destruction occurs in the stomach
if we are considering what happens in
what shall we say
the harbour of our body
rather than the port
enclosed be not genuinely
within
a distinction between
The Coast Guard
and
The Harbour Police

we said earlier that
grey squirrels may be using squirrel pox virus
as a weapon against red squirrels
to move to a plant based example
most people are aware of the concept of
variegated greenery
and some may know that flowers
particularly
tulips
are known fro a major part of their beauty
being down to having a virus on board
indeed many variegated plant varieties are subject to
reverting to plain green
if they loose their virus
and gardeners have to cut out the reverted bits to
maintain the virus infection
at the very least we can say
viruses are not
inevitably lethal

23rd March 2020

as we write
we have no idea when these words will be published
we have a couple of observations on the concept of
The Playing Fields of Eton
We have this idea that rich people pay a lot of money to
have their children well educated
the consequence, the concept not appreciated
is that the 'Best Schools' are
Military Cadet Training Establishments
they do not prepare their pupils to
understand the world
but to
re-fight the Napoleonic Wars
the other point is informative trivia
The First Hospital in England to declare itself
Full due to CoViD-19 illness
is situated on
the Playing Fields of Harrow School
not Eton
it is right hard by
Harrow School Swimming Place
over the road from the actual school
again we see real world evidence that
illness is the bedfellow of wealth
not poverty
it is often the arrogance of wealth
in face of healthy living guidance
that puts most strain on the health service

we are going to outline three scenarios
we know some people will say that we are suggesting that
all three will happen
to quote the great
Edd China
you can't argue with stupid
we set up three scenarios that
HAVE NOT AND WILL NOT HAPPEN
1 Corona Virus number 19
is just another name for the 'flu
2 Corona Virus 19
arrived from space and will wipe out
all life on Planet Earth
3 Corona Virus Number 19
is a virus that has been kicking around in a
geographically isolated region
and it has been spread by
increased trade and tourism
well number 3 may be true but let's pretend not
the bane of anybody trying to use
USE not Create, collect
statistics
is that the rules for compiling them are
always being changed
so you are rarely comparing like with like
so trends may be glitches or artefacts
what appears to be a disruption to a trend may
in fact be a disruption to data collection methods
and so here we pretend that we have a
pure time series
numbers that record the same thing in the same way
all the way through
here's the test
are the numbers of people dying with the infection
1 rising
2 steady
falling
let us say that we are confident that there is
only one way the new infection can kill people
in this case
by oxygen starvation due to
inflammation of the lungs
what we have in the real world statistics as published is
this person died and we found the 'new' virus on or in the body
the test used is not the old fashioned bacteriological test
take a sample and smear it on a Petri Dish
and see what grows
the test being used is essentially the same as
DNA profiling used at crime scenes
DNA profiling as developed in
Nottingham or Leicester
is a crude version of what is now used
we do sequencing now
they did patterns then
and probably still do for
Law Enforcement purposes
but that is a side issue
what matters is the CoViD-19 test is
very sensitive
and we get that result in the stats
we do not get that broken down into
the general headings we would expect in
an autopsy
a post mortem
report
we get
was the suspect there
not
why or how did the victim die
and so to our three scenarios
we have a concept of
excess deaths
if we take people who died of respirtory failure
we expect more to die in the winter
than in the summer
that in a sense is counter intuitive
we would expect from logic
as opposed to from experience
that all that pollen and hay fever and such
would mean more deaths from respiratory failure in the summer
than in the winter
but it is not so
and so...
how do we calculate the
excess deaths from CoViD-19
?
if between 30 and 40 people dying each day from
lethal respiratory disease
where found at post mortem to be
smeared with
alder pollen
or grass pollen
or corona virus number 19
we would come to a different conclusion from if
on day one we found 30 dead people with CV 19 on them
and on day 2 we found 60 dead people with CV 19 on them
and on day 3 we found 120 dead people with CV 19 on them
here's the bit that's difficult
if we had a serological test - blood test - for
CV 19 antibodies
we could test the dead people's blood
and see whether they
died whilst fighting CoViD-19
or whether it was
an innocent bystander
that deserves thought and investigation
This planet is chugging along reasonably well
not in terms of how well it is being managed
but in terms of how much less badly it is being managed
than it used to be

at times like these we do reflect on the
bio-medical
the default position of
the press and the authorities is
notwithstanding the
Cult of the Pulitzer Prize
is this the big one
is Armageddon upon us?
the default position is
anything 'green' or ecological will
cost jobs
and any consideration of
any discussion of
matters medical
is done for the sole purpose of gaining
sexual gratification
since most male police officers have not yet
discovered the existence of
let alone the purpose of
the little button just above the
joint between the legs on the
Barbie Doll
they are married to...
they assume that
sexual gratification is a
purely male thing
and so matters related to
children and medicine
can safely be handed to
The Ladies
since they will just
kiss it to make it better
and so there is a medical crisis and
the
men in sheds
decide the answer will be
a better mouse trap
like sending the men off to
boil some water
during childbirth
send the men off to
make ventilators
while the
womenfolk
clean up the mess
Ricker's Gran died when he was 4
it was Christmas Eve
like not the day
like 8 o'clock in the evening on the day
his mam was visiting her mam
and the excitement killed
anyway
Ricker was 4
but he had a half brother who was old enough to
have a wife
and that wife was a nurse
and Ricker's mam and her step daughter-in-law
spent that Christmas Eve
Laying Out
Ricker's Gran
so she was fit for
the Menfolk to see
ans so Ricker knows he has to produce an
engineering based explanation to
viruses and immunity if the explanation is to have any
cut through
with the press
imagine then
that you are working in the
shed at the back
of a world famous museum
and an artefact is brought in that must be preserved as is
but you are to try to get it working
think of a model of an old steam engine
you need a drive shaft the connect
two part of the mechanism together
if you are lucky
the two ends will need a rod of the same diameter
and you will have that in stock
your day will go smoothly
if you are 'unlucky' or lucky if you are
looking for a challenge
you will have to select some over sized rod or bar and
turn down each end as appropriate

when we say
when we throw our hands in the air and cry
not everything in medicine is about
mutation
we do not mean
The Universe is and always was and always will be
exactly as God created it
we have faith in Darwin
whether or not the universe is a
supra galactic super computer
evolution in the 'real world' does not happen at the
speed of a weather forecasting computer
evolution grinds wondrous slow
we
humans involved in
animal husbandry and plant breeding
can speed it up with
un-natural interventions
but
without
adult supervision
in nature
major genetic changes are
almost always
lethal
we know that in some parts of the world
before the introduction of
world wide click of the mouse
social media and before that
the movies
in some parts of the world
the flatter a girl's face
the more likely she was to
breed
in other parts of the world
the larger and more prominent her eyes
the more likely she was to breed
and so
geographically anchored diversities evolved
this is in contrast to
islands where
only one bird
for example a finch
finds its way there and
lfe is hard and
yer basic generic finch struggles but
the weirdoes
find a niche
and each family in its niche gets more and more weird and
eventually evolves to a point beyond
actually fitting in in the mother family

since
virus particles are not
crews by teams of
little green men
the selection process for them is rather
one sided
although some of the
bomb disposal expert humans
will blow themselves up in the process
over quite a short time
the variants of viruses that
humans can tolerate will persist
and the variants that humans cannot tolerate
will
go out of production

however
that being the overall picture
although most people will come to terms with their new
slightly modified
tenants
or
more nearly
jewellery
some individuals will
whenever they encounter a
kryptonite medallion
go into
anaphylactic shock
remember kryptonite was not toxic to humans
we would love to get the message across that
evolution is about
SELECTION
not
MUTATION
and survival of the fittest
suffers from the fittest means
the best fitting
not the biggest and strongest
and so to return to our museum example
if each model fits on a table top
and the technician is offered
a tree trunk
by stores
the technician is not going to
SELECT the tree tunk

from time to time we come up with an idea that
needs writing down before we forget it
this idea is about
keeping your distance in groups
most in the developed world people get the opportunity
whilst children
tp play with
magnets
thinking more about the more powerful magnets
to keep them strong
they are supplied, as toys, and otherwise
with a
keeper
there are two main styles of magnets
horse shoe magnets
bar magnets
horse shoe magnet has a single keeper
installed between
the poles - the ends
bar magnets are stored
in school science labs at least
in pairs side by side, head to toe
with a keeper at each end
with a good strong magnet
it is quite a job to remove the keeper from the
poles of the magnet
it's an amusing little game to
put the keeper on a table
and see how close you can bring the magnet to the keeper
without the keeper flying through the air to
jump into place on the poles of the magnet
as so with a virus
it's like throwing a crisps or a mint into the air
and trying to catch it in your mouth
get the distance wrong..
and your treat ends up on the floor

16th March 2020

Our Ricker does not watch
Last Tango in Halifax
for a very short time
Ricker's sister was a fellow pupil with
Anne Reid
at White House School
in Kirkleatham Street, in Redcar
White House school, white bricks, Pease
Coatham
been there before

one of the more
unhelpful
lines promoted on TV is
this pandemic is nothing whatever to do with 'flu
if you have been recommended to get this year's
'flu jab
and you haven't
for God's sake
go to a pharmacy - not your GP - and get one
your body is not
like a parking space
you can have more than one infection at the same time
even if the 'flu vaccine is no help whatever with
CoViD-19 - of which we are far from certain
you don't want CoVid-19 and 'flu together at the same time
a lot of this talk how shall we say it
you may have only carrots and no beans
in a farmer's field
but that does not mean you can't have
carrots, bean, spuds, and asparagus , and
God know what else
on your allotment - kitchen garden
and worst of all
do not
DO NOT
deliberately expose yourself to the likes of
the 'flu
in the hopes that it will keep CoViD-19 out

here we are going to apply a motoring analogy to
the viral pandemic
in the UK
almost everybody recognises the term
MOT
as standing for
Ministry of Transport
and
an MOT
or an MOT test
is a test to generate a certificate to say
a tested vehicle is fit for use on public roads
and naturally MOT has become more widely used for
an in-servce check of fitness
the thing about an MOT is that it is entirely
safety orientated
and so there are two sorts of classification of failure
a vehicle can fail because it has so much bodywork rust
that it is beyond economic repair
it could fail because it needs a light bulb replaced
it will not fail if it has
scratched, mildly dented and surface rusted bodywork
a car will not crash as a result of being
a very unfashionable colour
or having disgustingly dirty seats or carpets
despite its new MOT we will scrap it anyway
those are the people we need to protect?
obsessing about protecting fit and healthy 80 years olds
from having a temperature for a week
should not be used as an excuse for
letting a bunch of folk with dementia
drown in their own saliva
say you have a village in which over a period of ten years
thirty people die
say twenty of those people had
a Ford motor car
this is a very weak link between
having a Ford car and dying
it is very easy to test a patient who is very ill
to check for one particular virus
and fail to check for any others
if you leave a number of cats
home alone
and your furniture is damaged - scratched to death
in the absence of CCTV
do you blame all the cats?
in all probability you blame the cat that
most recently joined your household
and so we are
underestimating the number of infections
and over estimating the influence of the new virus
in morbidity and mortality of patients
what we should be looking for - in China
four months down the road
is
chronic effects
a change in the level of health of the survivors
we have the medical histories of the victims
there are few accounts of
people who were fit and healthy before infection, dying

ther is no validity whatsoever to the idea that
anybody over the age of 70
who contracts the virus
will die
or even need more than a couple of packets of
paracetamol and some honey drinks
all the people who have died WITH the new virus
have been over 60
does not lead logically to
everybody over 70 who contracts the virus will
need to be put on a ventilator
the first question journalists should be asking is
what proportion of people who were over 80 and
living in Wuhan
six months ago
are alive today
and how does that compare to the proportion who
survived the corresponding period
in previous years
that answers the question
is dying from this infection
related to being elderly?
since this virus is the new cat in the household
is it destroying
all the furniture
or has it just just taken exception to
one particular cushion

The problem we have in the UK with the
why aren't we doing what them other people are doing
brigade
is that they have dug up
Passover thinking
a viral infection is not a
miasma
a cloud that will sweep across the land and leave
a shower of rain
avoided by ducking indoors
the virus, the infection, is not
out there
it is in other people
and all this cleaning is of minimal value
in the worst case scenario
it will always be in them
even after they are immune to it
you too need to be immune to it
we cannot rely on it
mutating to a more benign form
we have to learn to live with it
and anything else the
gastronomic adventurers dig up for us
that is the risk
we will take three viruses
small pox
human papilloma virus - HPV
human immunodeficiency virus - HIV
small pox is a simple lethal viral infection
right from the very start
the very start was that
having a bout of cow pox
gave you immunity to small pox
the basis of inoculation and vaccines
most viruses take over a cell
> a cell of a bacterium, a plant, an animal, a person
and rather in the sense of a
home invasion
take over the facilities to breed
like a burglar getting the baby sitter pregnant
HPV does something different
it digs up the garden and plants hash
it doesn't
borrow the facilities
it turns up the heating
it switches the cell into a
proliferative mode
so far as we know
HIV targets cells in the immune system
when we say that we don't mean it
what we mean is
the cells that HIV is able to break into
happen to be cells involved in immunity
they probably swallow it in a way that other cells don't
just doin' their job
like bomb disposal experts
and get blown up by a virus no other cell would go near
it's tough to build up immunity to a virus that
goes straight for the military
we don't know which of those
CoViD-19 is
it is Probably PROBABLY quite a lot like
but not exactly the same as
the sort of virus we can keep down to a
harmless level
we may even get lucky and
do a small pox on it
we don't know YET
we think it is time to do a bit about
epidemiology
regarding the current pandemic
we have been told that the source or epicentre or
patient zero
was associated with a
live food market
separately we have been directed towards
pangolin scales
we have a virus
it is spreading because there is no
herd immunity to it
almost anywhere in the world
the appropriate contact tracing exercise would be to
identify a community - anywhere n the world where there was
a herd immunity to this virus
a place, however large or small, where
almost nobody got sick,
whether or not they test positive for the virus
and then you do on that population
serological - blood - tests for antibodies to the virus
and then you cross reference to any
'novel' foodstuff that has recently begun to be
exported from that place
foreign country or enclave
to Wuhan
it is clear that to stop this happening again
Naturalists should be
out there
collecting samples from all manner of wildlife
so that their viruses can be characterised
and vaccines put on the shelf
BEFORE some crack pot, arty farty, chef
decides to put
yet another
superfood
on the menus of the world
and we wish to distinguish
Gordon the Moron Ramsey
from
Heston
who applies new techniques to
dependable food stocks
regarding
vox pops
why do the BBC think that they should inflict
their 'rushes' on the public
just to 'prove' that they are not censoring public opinion
regarding testing for
the CViD-19 disease virus
there are two tests
the swab - nose and throat swab - test
and a test not being done yet
the serological test
the swab test tells us whether you have the virus
that's it
it does not tell us whether you have the disease
the serum test will tell us
whether you have or have had the disease
there is no test, and never will be a test
that tells us whether you are
susceptible to the virus
there are no people who can be identified as
likely to get the disease
except categories such as
immunosuppressed
and as we said
too weak to cough
vulnerable people can be identified by their
history
not by a lab test

we will now try to give a relatable concept of
a carrier
you have a body that has
surfaces
and
insides
in a sense this could be seen as
surfaces - your garden
insides - your home
most people who don't want their home
infested with wild mice
will at the first sign of visiting mice
lay down traps and poison
most people would not set them around the
boundary of their garden
your body does not do that in terms of
anti bodies
the immune system is
internal
and so any virus on YOUR surfaces will be
safe from your immune system
however, as we have said
safe from the immune system
but not safe from
drying out , ultraviolet light etc.
so there is a vestibule
nose and mouth cavities
where the virus is safe from your immune system
and safe from the big bad world
but still will not remain viable for very long
maybe a couple of days

now we bring in another concept
tidal volume
at rest - that means, at work
sitting at a desk
each breath shifts around
half a litre of air
the lungs are a cul-de-sac
somewhere along the evolutionary road
things evolved that
didn't get their oxygen by
passing water over gills
they developed a push me pull you approach
people who study fossils tell us that
insects escaped the water long before any other type of life
or is that any other non-plant type of life did
so we set that aside and consider
animals evolving out of fish
but more importantly this somewhat risky concept of
having lungs that do not drain
it's one of those imperfections that results from the random nature of
evolutionary history
fish have lungs as well as gills
we have fish now that can live out of water
mud skippers
the thing about the lungs that fish have is that they are not
designed for
exchange of gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide
their name gives away their function
fish have a mechanism to control and adjust their
buoyancy
like as ship but in reverse
a ship takes on and pumps out water as balast
to perfect its trim and ride height
fish have the reverse
a structure called a
swim bladder
that they use to adjust their trim and buoyancy
by filling with gas
it has no ducts to the water
or does it?
do fish blow bubbles when
they want to sink?
there are species of fish that
blow bubbles
they make floating nests for their eggs
from air bubbles
but we don't think the swim bladder has anything to do with that
perhaps some mud skipper types
developed with a duct
like a hare lip on a human - a defect
a defect that got useful to a
fish out of water
if you wanted to DESIGN an out of water
gas exchange organ
you would design it with a sump plug
design it as an analogue of the gut
but the lungs weren't designed
they evolved as a result of a need colliding with a
defect
and so we need to
cough
normal people - not athletes
have two litres of air in them when they have breathed out
and two and a half litres when they breath in
and the air change is
at the top
for a virus in the nose and mouth
trying to infect a cell is like
trying to pitch a tent in a fast flowing river
what you get is saliva and mucus
nothing for the tent pegs to grip
your insides are - male form
a main road and a cul-de-sac
female form, a main road with a
cul-de-sac at each end
except that the lower female cul-de-sac has
a cut through, ginnel, walkway, whatever
that's a different story
the main road is
the gut
the cul-de-sac is the lungs
in the lungs there are
two major clean up mechanisms
little hairs called cilia
that are a bit like the thing where the hairs on your arms
stand up and relax when your hair stands on end
they beat up and down to shift mucus and any trapped
soot, bacteria, and viruses
towards the mouth
and the other clean up mechanism is
the cough
the cough clears mucus that has got out of the
tiny crevices - actually more like tiny bunches of grapes
into the tubes of the lung
one of the problems with ait pollution - including smoking
is that the cilia get gummed up or killed
a bit like for those who know about these things
inner ear deafness when the bits of the ear that
pick up vibrations
get damaged
or never form properly
and cystic fibrosis
is where there is
too much mucus in the lungs and or it is too thick and sticky
irritation cause over secretion of mucus and we get
facultative? - temporary - cystic fibrosis
grape type bit full for mucus not air
starve the body of oxygen
providing oxygen instead of air
only works if
1 only part of the lung is gummed up
or
if the patient is so weak that
their tidal volume is
way down
shallow breathing
broadly
suction will only clear the tubes
not the alveoli - the grape style end organs
which is why you need a chest drain...
overall, adapting cystic fibrosis therapies to
pneumonia a pleurisy is the sort of last resort
or if you want that in English...
Healthy persons commonly aspirate,
but normally defence mechanisms usually
clear the inoculum without sequelae.
Aspiration pneumonia includes three syndromes
based on the nature of the inoculum
1 chemical pneumonitis
2 Bacterial infection
3 mechanical obstruction
as noted below
bacteria and fungi can live on - eat
many substances
viruses need to infect living cells
broadly a virus in a human needs to gain access to
actual cells - usually via access to the
blood circulation
the irritation caused by a virus
can cause the body to secrete the likes of mucus that
protects cells from virus particles
but at the same time all that
soggy bandage mucus
is food for bacteria
and so
the primary disease may be a viral infection
antibiotics are important to suppress the
secondary bacterial flowering
they don't kill the virus
but they do help the patient

two of the cutest things in nature are
Koala bears and Meercats
they appeal because they
spend a lot of time - like humans
with their spines vertical
their heads stacked above their chest above their hips
what happens here is...
consider a beer bottle
a person or animal with a vertical spine
their lungs at least
can be seen as an empty beer bottle
that is stood up
left out in the rain
rain will enter through the neck and
in time water will build up in the bottom
an animal such as a dog
could be considered as an empty beer bottle
laid on its side in the rain
no matter how much rain gets in there
due to a flood or simply rain falling down
the bottle will never get even half full
if you sit around a lot
and you begin to cough and splutter if you
attempt to lie down
that may well be an indication that you have
congestion of the lungs
a build up of fluid on the lungs

9th March 2020

we are not here to understand the details of
Scunthorpe and Port Talbot steel works
one or both of them has three tiny little
blast furnaces
one or both of them has four tiny little balst furnaces
we are not going to research how many of them are in use
we know that one a Port Talbot has had money spent on it recently
we are now told that
around 50 people will soon be loosing their jobs at a
for Christ's sake
steel distribution depot in
DARLINGTON
whose idea was it to sell Redcar steel from a dump in Darlo?
and so on top of that
as we said before around a dozen train crew
shifting bloom from Scunthorpe to Redcar
cut
raw - unrolled - steel will not be run from Scunthorpe
to Redcar
Lackenby and Skinningrove will 'soon'
for a while
get their steel from
a new electric arc scrap melter
to be built at Lackenby
when that is up and running
there will be 400 job losses in Scunthorpe
as one blast furnace is shut down
later
the strip mill will be put back into
Lackenby Mills
the beds and infrastructure are still there from when it was
shipped to China in the first place
at that point there will be a question
do we
1 go back to shipping raw steel to Redcar from Scunthorpe
to feed the re0instated strip mill
or
2 do we build a new blast furnace in Redcar to feed the mills
or
3 do we re-start the existing blast furnace in Redcar?
there is a problem with option 3
the existing mothballed plant
can't run at less than
3 million tonnes a year
that puts it in competition with....
the toys they play with in Port Talbot
AND
pipes are supposed to be made in
Hartlepool
and long products - railway rails
for example for
HS2
are supposed to be made in
Workington
not flaming Scunthorpe
and so it is not so much
Death by a Thousand Cuts
more like death - for SCUNTHORPE - by a dozen cuts
400 out of 2000 jobs go as soon as the electric arc furnace
at Lackenby is up and running
less than a couple for years
to reprise
Lackenby HAD
a strip mill and a beam mill
it still has its beam - girder - mill up and running
it just needs its strip mill back in the beds alongside
in the pre-existing
shed
and
rolls and motors are
consumables
they wear out
all that needs to
'come back'
are the roll frames
and for our Geordie neighbours
rolls used to mean
Davey Roll
one roll per 40 tonne truck
rolls are a bit like
brake drums and discs
you take them off and re-cut the surface
but eventually they can't be re-cut any more
in sum
as a result of Scunthorpe-Port Talbot having
six to eight tiny little blast furnaces
and Redcar having a whopper
Scunthorpe-Port Talbot has
flexibility in terms of
adjusting output
BUT
every time a blast furnace goes cold
there is a risk
greater with the smaller ones
that they will have to be
completely re-built
in order to be able to start them up again
However, this deal is more complicated than that
So far as we can tell....
Port Talbot remains
Tata
and will for the moment continue to supply
strip or sheet steel to
The UK car industry
what is quite interesting is that
Jingye have bought
Lackenby, Skinningrove, Workington, Darlington
but ALSo
Hoogeovens
In other words they have bought
Corus minus what Tata and Liberty have
we think Liberty own Hartlepool
and so
we are unsure
about how many jobs have been lost in
The Netherlands
at the start of this deal
if we could say that the deal means
closing one blast furnace in Scunthorpe
and one or two at what was
Hoogeovens then we are a lot nearer to having enough demand to
justify re-lighting Redcar
and there is another dimension to this
we can't check at present
can't be bothered to check
but Jingye has been described as
Chinese
we are not entirely sure that that is not
more exactly
Hong Kong Chinese
that would make quite a difference

we'd like to know
why are the
rich, powerful, and famous
in such shockingly poor health?
setting aside the concept of
you've met this female
bung her a few million or you'll
spend the rest of your life in jail

this movie mogul
appears in court looking like death warmed up
and the wimin say
it's theatrics
he knows actors and their tricks
setting aside the fact that his accusers are from the same the moment he gets into custardy
never mind jail
he's whisked off for
heart bypass surgery
some may say it reflects the
self delusional bubble in which
rich, powerful, and famous people
live
people... Liz Tayler, and somebody who has just had a
bio-pic
Liza Minellie was it?
so people not just men
once The State
has control of these people
and stops fawning on them
the state says
we're not having you dying on us
you WILL have a check-up
and we will keep you alive
AND
our Ricker remembers having to have a
chest X-ray
to prove he didn't have TB
tuberculosis
before he was allowed to
work with children
much much later he recalls being
frisked by a policeman
to check whether he had an erection
in a room full of women
priorities change
if it had been a rectal probe searching for
contraband
that would have made sense but this was a
frontal only
see how YOU like it attack
probably standard
'see if we can provoke the prisoner'
procedure
but there is another dimension
was the male PC trying to check whether a
'bloke' who can
empathise
with wimin
really has any
wedding vegetables
at the same time
Ricker was asked
have you any illnesses
he said yes
and go a two minute argument from a woman
who refused to write down
Guillain-Barre syndrome
because she didn't do
writing
just box ticking
but the woman at the other end of the counter
was quite happy to write down
hazel
for eye colour
and while we are at it
the rather lovely DC - Detective Constable
Lnsay Forbes
remember The Inspector Lynley Mysteries?
DC Forbes reminded Ricker of Lynley's side kick
Sgt. Barbara Havers played by Sharon Small
never heard of her again?
opened his clamshell mobile
and instead of going beep it
Dolce et Gabbbana
and so clamshell 'phone gives a date clue
Rickeer had been arrested for sending an email to
Ian Swales MP
that referred to the fact that
women have simpler plumbing than men
and therefore tend to be much more leaky
that was before
Period Poverty
became
a Thing
and so on
International Wimin's Day
we can say there is still progress
Ricker did get off in the end
but it is quite interesting to contrast the
team of wimin set on Ricker a few years ago
for
mentioning Wimin's Things
and the removal -post BrExit
of the designation
luxury item
from sanitary products
here we will reference from below
the statistic that
one third of 11 year olds in Middlesbrough are
functionally illiterate
this case was heard in Teesside Magistrates' Court
and Teesside Crown Court
in the magistrates' court
Cleveland Police and the crown Prosecution Service
had DC Forbes
read out the emails in open court
for the benefit of the bench
they were all set to have her repeat the performance
at crown Court
but the judge said
thta won't be necessary
we can read
there is no way Ricker can be accused to
seeking to upset DC Forbes in this case
but the CPS?
oh it brings back the days of
Joyce Grenfell
comedy actor
George, don't do that George
Grenfell often played a typical 1960s
WPC
Woman Police Constable
there are none of those today
nobody with the rank
WPC
restricted to
keeping children and sex workers
out of the hair of
real coppers
the character was normally called
WPC Pearly Gates
referencing St Peter
and
Pearly Kings and Queens
the question we have to ask is
is this new found obsession with
'domestics'
a response to
higher standards and greater demand
or is it a response to
having more wimin
on the force
in the courts
in the probation service
are these wimin still playing real life Pearly Gates?
we know that there are at least
three high profile
unlawful killings of female police officers
whilst on duty
Yvonne Fletcher
being the 'first' high profile case
Cleveland police has to scrabble back to
the 19th century to find and officer of any gender
killed on duty
other than by their own appalling driving
which is the driver?
we've got more female officers so we need to find suitable cases for them
or
we need to deal with these issues
we can't get the 'lads' to do it
better get some wimin in?
and this is not about
physical limitations
barristers and judges
of the female construction type
who are in court and well protected
from physical harm
are pressured towards
working in the
Family Division
it's almost like
we have a dog section
we have been ordered to have as many cats as dogs
in the kennels
what the hell are we gonna do with the cats?
mouse patrol

we understand that it was
International Wimin's Day Yesterday
Ricker had a think
he asked
what movie?
and he thought
Wall E
the 'guests' on the space ship
wimin
but then of course he thought
Boxing Helena
all the time that we develop
electricity and hydraulics
we get closer to
wimin no longer needing men to
do the heavy lifting
nobody sees the world from every available point of view
we want to reference a
Charlie Chaplin
movie
but this sort of thing always required a lot of
back story
if you see old buildings you see the windows are
made up of small panes of glass
connected with strips of wood
it was essentially the development in mid 20th century of
float glass - Pilkingtons
Yes yes Ricker met Sir Alexander Pilkington
at?
Teesside Polytechnic
incidentally he was there to demonstrate the first
liquid crystal display, not float glass
would the wimin allow either of them anywhere near
these days?
float glass made possible the introduction of
'picture windows'
windows not broken up with supporting glazing bars
and so, back to Charlie Chaplin
in the movie in question, Charlie is walking the streets
of a working class section of an industrial town
on his back is a wooden frame
on the frame are sheets of window glass
around 30 by 45 cm
one foot by 18 inches
Charlie indicates - silent movie
to a street urchin
this if you throw a stone and break a window
Charlie is then miraculously on hand to
replace the broken glass
for a fee
the days before
DIY
the days when wimin
got a man in
if anything broke
the days before
waiting 'til tea time and telling the
man of the house to
make use of the twenty odd quid a month for
broadband
and download a Utube about
how to fix it
and the wimin chorus
wot? in THESE shoes
wimin's complaints about the
intolerable burden of femininity
bring back images of
foot binding
binding little girls' feet so that they could not grow
so that they were unable to walk, or work
mainly associated with medieval China

if we ever get back on line we have something to search for
neuramimic acid
as things stand we know very little about this
we know the definition
it is located at the region of a cell membrane where
viruses attach
cells - we don't know which ones
have a structure - a sort of docking port
for viruses
and so we cells that have
virus receptors
if the cells the collect virus particles are
part of the immune system
they may have these docking ports as part of a process of
destroying the virus
to reproduce - even to continue to exist
viruses need to be inside cells
if some cells are designed to capture them...
it is possible that if a cell has
virus receptors
and for some reason has
defective or absent
lysosomes
the virus may thrive to an unexpected extent
the other possibility is that some cells
harvest virus particles
to use as weapons
we have said - below - that some viruses are known as
bacteriophage
perhaps some of the body's cells are seeking bacteriophage
and catch some other type of virus

It is a very, very, very long time since our Ricker
last had his hands on an
electron microscope
and just to show how much things have changed
it was at the
Tioxide Reserch labs
on Portrack Lane, in Stockton-on-Tees
hence we stand happy to be corrected if these things have changed
what we understand by an electron microscope is
a microscope that does not use light to produce images of samples
but a beam of electrons
back in the twentieth century
most people had a box in their home that produced and used a
beam of electrons
it was called
the telly
the TV - television
modern TVs don't use that technology
electron microscopes use a technology
quite similar to the reverse of the of
Cathode Ray Tube
reverse in the sense of similar to the way
TV cameras of the time worked
what we are getting at is a technology where
electro magnets moved beams of electrons
in a similar way to the management of
light rays
by lenses
there is a major problem with
beams of electrons
they just don't pass through
air
and so where ever you are using beams of electrons
you have to work in a vacuum
this is no problem with samples of
titanium
or titanium dioxide
or anything
solid
viruses are very small
too small to see with a light microscope
and so they have to be imaged by an electron microscope
they are also very
squidgy
if you want to image very small sqidgy things
with an electron microscope
who have to either
freeze them
or
more likely
plate them
with metal
you bombard the sample with atoms of metal
and a surface of metal is built up
and that metal impression will
survive the conditions
vacuum and electron beam bombardment
that exist, prevail, in the sample chamber of
an electron microscope
and so
there have been 'images' of viruses kicking around
for a long time
but the impression of
inside out golf balls
is a bit
how shall we say
indirect
at best they are images of
what viruses look like
in outer space
and light has colours
electron beams are not recorded in colour
the colours are artist's impression added later
somewhere in the chaos of our Ricker's 'library'
there is a book full of electron micrographs
real ones
and they are all in
black and white

seeing as how Ricker has nothing better to do
we'll explain how electron microscopes work
light
light is photons
and photons have a dual nature
in the words of the old timers
they are particles that have
St.Vitus' Dance
they are particles that are ALWAYS moving
and they progress from source - sun, light bulb, whatever
to target, place, surface where they are absorbed
they progress, process, but the also
vibrate, veer from side to side
and the distance they process - as in a procession
whilst moving once from side to side and
back to the side where they started
is called the
wavelength
blue light makes the trip quicker than the other colours of
visible light
because it is more energetic
and so to has a
shorter
wavelength
and the wavelength of the light determines
how much detail you can get in an image
AND
electrons...
is the same
but they are much much more energetic than photons
so they have a much shorter
wavelength
and can capture images of much finer detail
simples

if you are an ecologist you have two forms of
optical assistance
bineos
and binocs
lots of people have binoes
they are
binoculars
binocs are
binocular microscopes
a binocular microscope is an instrument for
obtaining a low magnification view
of a sample by
reflected light
if you are a
medical laboratory scientist
you will not be using binoculars
you will be using
binocular microscopes
and
transmission light microscopy
routine light microscopy
lies between
the binocular microscope and the
electron microscope
but it is the one where the sample is sliced thin
with a microtome
and mounted on a glass slide
so that a section can be viewed
in an electron microscope
the images are produced from electrons
reflected off
and not transmitted through
the sample
so far as we know
nobody has yet developed
computer aided electron tomography
whereby electron are 'shone' through structures
and a computer generates an image from
data about how the electron beam is deviated and absorbed
if such machines exist
they are not used to generate the
'virus images'
of popular science

we are somewhat blocked at present
so we thought we would do some research
just to see what the other guys think
virus
latin for - poisonous liquid
intracellular obligate parasite
that means it lives
inside the cells of other species
it cannot live anywhere else
once outside the host cell
it can go through a process of dying
from which it can be revived by
Google,Twitter, whatever, reference?
by being a clown car that blunders into a gold mine
we want to say here
virus 'activity'?
there is NOTHING going on here the likes of
bees finding nectar
absolutely the opposite
put that completely from your mind
it is inert - apparently lifeless, non-functioning
outside the host cell
the host cell has to have
DNA or RNA
it is invisible except under the
electron microscope
it's vanishingly tiny
a few molecules
those molecules are
perhaps a protein coat, perhaps not
depending on strain
nucleic acid
usually RNA
ribonucleic acid - RNA
deoxyribonucleic acid DNA
definitions change
once upon a time
a virus was
any kind of pathogen
then the sub-divisions
ultra virus and filterable virus came to be used
what we now call a virus is
the very smallest biologically active entity that is
as we say
something more than an enzyme
some viruses are referred to as
phages
or
bacteriophages
these viruses specialise in being parasites on
bacteria
here is the bit that matters
VIRUSES ARE
UNABLE TO MULTIPLY OUTSIDE OF
THEIR HOST ANIMAL OR PLANT CELL
they can exist on surfaces and in media
but they need to be
in living cells
in order to reproduce
in relatable terms
see them as male
see them as having
sperm
but
NO EGGS
NO WOMB
because bacteriophages can be
grown
in bacteria
most research on and in viruses has been done on
bacteriophages
honestly, beyond their structures
we don't know much about what viruses actually do

the first
take away
from this
is
you can't study viral infection through
conventional - visible light - microscopes and slides
they are way too small
the second take away is they are not a fungus but
they are a parasite and we know that
a lot of fungi live on they
dying parts of trees
the thing about the over 80s being the main victims
is that their cells are loosing their vitality
their defences are down
and one of the basic ideas about virus damage is that
a virus blunders into a cell
it sets about using the facilities
and turns the cell to making virus
like Nazi Germany invading Poland and making the local car factories
switch to making tanks
the virus does not make virus
it forces the cell it has invaded to make virus
and swords to ploughshares
we are developing treatments that force a virus
to force a defective human cell
to make the product - often an enzyme or hormone
that that cell should be making but isn't
once a cell has been switched to tanks manufacture
virus manufacture
we have no way to switch it back
if we are old or ill
we may have no healthy cells left
that is not the usual state of affairs
because
however old we get we are geared up to producing
skin, and gut lining, and lung lining, cells
and so for the most part
old people who die from this sort of thing
drown in a soup of secretions, virus, and dead cells
here's the kicker
we have said
don't put casualties in
THE RECOVERY POSITION
IN THIS CASE
in this rare case
put the patient in the recovery position
less affected lung above the more affected lung
and put a chest drain
in the lower lung
the drain should be right into a brochus
not simply into the
pleural cavity
the companion of pneumonia is
pleuricy
so the gunk can drain out without coughing or suction
the people who will die from CoVD19
corona virus disease number 19
are either
too weak to cough
or some blame idiot - possibly themselves
has rammed them full of
antossin
cough suppressing meds
and another thing...
nerves are very complex structures
but the are essentially
tubes of salty water
encased in fat
and so
some viruses merge into the fatty walls of nerves
and get carried off by the structures of the nerve
like a termite blundering into a tunnel that's
part of an ant nest
and then we are talking
chicken pox and generally pox viruses, that sort of thing
not the pneumonia an pluricy type virus
differnt wall material
not
different 'strategy'

and one thing to be on the look out for is
the unproductive cough
if you are ill and you experience the cough reflex
and nothing comes up
that's a worry
if you are not ill it is probable that what came up was
so little - the routine maintenance load
that you did not notice it
because it should not normally come up as far as your mouth
spitting is generally not
phlegm
but
saliva

we have heard this comment about
don't touch your face
in relation to hygiene
we think we should introduce a couple of 'new' words
into the conversation
lysosomes - lysozomes
and
lysozyme
lysozyme an enzyme found in mammalian tissue secretions
such as tears and white of egg
white of egg is avian not mammalian but let that pass
except to ask
does this have any bearing on the
attenuation of vaccines produced in eggs?
lysosome
Greek - loosing body
nearly spherical bodies smaller than mitochondria
which are thought to isolate autolysing enzymes of the cell
and so prevent
self-digestion
they have been called mitochondria B
and light mitochondria
we do not know whether they have their own
DNA
and are therefore the same sort of
obligate commensal parasites that mitochondria are
up sum
tears disinfect your eyes
and salive disinfects your mouth
it is
wounds
that represent the major infection threat
the watchword is
it'll never get better
if you pick (at) it
it is much more important to keep wounds clean
than to avoid touching your face

we have no idea how long ago
'call me Dave'
David Cameron
was UK Prime Minister
but we have seen at least one really significant change
since then
this speaks to the folly of
consulting with the industry
in times of crisis
people in the UK are not at unprecedented risk from
COVID19
CoViD 19
to be more precise
however the problem points up a snag with
deciding that one particular industry is
all important
it is often a little off-putting to see
adverts from the likes of
wateraid
where a tap is running to waste
with clean drinkable water
after an intervention by a charity
it contrasts with UK call me Dave era
propaganda
born out of
a leaking water pipes situation
regarding
hose pipe bans
and the like
we have moved quite smartly from
water is precious
to
water is spreading disease
all over the place
a government that 'delivers' for one industry
let the pipes leak, we'll handle public opinion
damages other industries - the health service...
and the general public good
wash under running water
or with alcohol
you are not saving the planet by
rinsing your toothbrush
in a puddle - very elegant posh new bathroom puddle
of stagnant water
there are people saying
soapy water destroys pathogens
we are far from convinced about this
water hot enough to destroy germs - pathogens
will scald
do not rely on the temperature of washing water
on your person
as opposed to water used to wash
crockery and cutlery
to destroy pathogens
the posh term for hand washing - body washing - is
ablutions
from the Latin
to wash away
soap is a mild caustic
it is generally made by treating fats with
full blown caustic materials
the function of soap is to
lift away the surface layer of the skin
exfoliation
pathogens in a bowl of tepid, slightly soapy water?
hot tub, sauna
alcohol destroys germs
for best results it should be
60 per cent alcohol
but the much weaker whiskey etc.
is all to the good
there used to be much talk of
surgical spirit

We're going to put down a marker here
Jingye Group
is a Chinese company
and today they are signing up to buy
British Steel
for Ł50 million
and they have a plan to invest
Ł1.2 billion
in the company
The initial job loss projection is
The loss of 400 jobs

What they get for the 50 million is
a steelworks in Scunthorpe
and a set of rolling mills at
Lackenby, between Redcar and Eston
we have to admit we don't know how much
steel rolling capacity at Scunthorpe that includes
what we do know is that Lackenby rolls structural steel
girders
Scunthorpe rolls
long products
we think that means
railway track
as of the present...
Scunthorpe sends one train load - ball park figure
of cast steel - slabs and blooms - mostly blooms
blooms are like steel tree trunks but of square section
to Skinningrove each week
and considerably more of the same to Lackenby
In terms of the published plans of the UK authorities
'a Chinese company' has plans to build an electric arc furnace
at Lackenby
to generate steel from scrap
it seems unlikely that this plant will produce
less steel than the amount currently transferred by rail
from Scunthorpe to Lackenby and Skinningrove
this could mean that one of
the dinky little blast furnaces at Scunthorpe
will be shut down and replaced by electric arc steel from scrap
and that randomly fits with the loss of
400 jobs
we understand that the redundency figure for
Redcar is around
fifteen
we guess that is the number of the
train crews and associates
involved
and if that is so they sould be easy to re-deploy

we do keep battering our heads against one particular brick wall
we understand that one third of
children leaving Primary School - aged 11 years - in Middlesbrough
are
functionally illiterate
given the investment in
class room assistants
some sort of explanation is called for
we have seen the idea of
breakfast clubs
the idea that these children can't read
because they turn up to lessons hungry
nobody seems to have an explanation as to how they can be
so undernourished as to be unable to concentrate on lessons
and at the same time
overweight
or
morbidly obese
never mind illiterate...
many of these kids arrive in Primary School
aged 4 or five
doubly incontinent
in nappies, diapers
is this
for lack of cash in the home?
or is it for lack of care?
there is a 'Blue Collar Mantra'
never learn how to do anything
that you aren't willing to
do for the rest of your life
is the reason
hey kids, don't learn how to read and write
it'll load you with
responsibilities
children have this charmed phase in their
normal development
between
The terrible twos
toddler tantrums
and
teenage rebellion
it could well be that efforts to persuade children to
value maximising their potential
should be focussed on them when they are between
five and ten
this agegroup tend to think their parents are saints
and frankly, without adult male family members
because the wimin are being protected from
coercive control
and all male teachers are paedos
all they have for ideas about male attributes come from
shoot 'em up
computer games

3rd March 2020

We have below published some thoughts on
Oxford University
and it's relationship to
The British Civil Service
when an organisation
launches a new initiative
it is easy to assume that it is NEW
mostly it will be a revamp or adaptation of
something traditional
Oxford keeps saying they want students from
deprived backgrounds
this is an adaptation of the system under which
the illegitimate offspring of The Nobility
were
sent away
to Public Schools and Oxford University
on the pretext that
it wasn't because of the identity of their
secret fathers
but because they were
ever so clever
ans so the tradition of them then finding their way
to Court
in
Non-hereditary roles
roles they did not inherit
but could be appointed to
grew up
and the demise of
Rotten Boroughs
constituencies where there were
a handful of eligible voters
is quite recent in terms of these institutions

2nd March 2020

This is a review of what is below
we want to use this idea of
grey squirrels versus red squirrels as an explainer
even though we are not entirely certain it happens
one of the ideas that comes up is the idea of
people who are immune compromised
being at greatest risk from viruses
we really want to place the lethality of virus infections on the scale of
autoimmune disease
to stretch a point
in the normal way of things in , for instance, Australia
it is quite routine for travellers to camp overnight
and start a camp fire
in bush fire season that may be forbidden
to put it another way
if the fire service are out on a job
they may extinguish a neighbour's
pretty display of candles
with extreme prejudice
as
collateral damage
when we say
pre-existing condition
we mean
the immune system is
already out on a job
and it may react in a
trigger happy way
to the least sign of trouble
sometimes we call that an auto immune response
bullets get sprayed around all over the place and
there is collateral damage
friendly fire
when a grey squirrel detects a squirrel pox virus
it shrugs
when a red squirrel detects a squirrel pox virus
all hell breaks loose
and so in a way
the people who die from these viruses may be
1 already at death's door
2 may respond with something akin to
anaphylactic shock
to the arrival of the novelty

When our Ricker worked for a small family run chain of
Opticians' shops with a factory in Godalming in Surrey
Bateman's ?
he shared a room with a Kenyan Asian
and so perhaps he has some insight into the mind of
Priti Patel
Ricker's room mate was an aerospace engineer and
he kept moving jobs because
he wanted to live and work in the UK
these companies hired him with a view to sending him out
as a sales engineer in the
Indian Sub-continent
in the first instance...
the Colonial British
had The UK, India - the continent - and
swathes of Africa
at their disposal
and so they sent, settled, re-planted
the wily little Indians
there is some confusion about the evolution of
ethnic slurs
time was there was a removable
paper golliwog behind the label of every jar of
Robertsons’ Jam
But wog derives from
wily oriental gentleman
oriental is the opposite of
occidental
The Orient
is the land where the sun rises
The Occident
is the land where the sun sets
and then there is the gender politics
did wog become unacceptable because of
a reference to wiley
damning someone with feint praise by describing then as
too clever by half
or effeminate
womanly wiles
if you are loosing the arguement
flash what you keep between your legs
is wily a distraction from a failure of fact or logic?
we suspect - without evidence - that golliwog derives from
goggle eyed foreigner
and when you witness
David Lamy MP in full flow.....
we digressed...
so they were sent , settled, re-planted
the wily little Indians
into Britannia's African lands
to organise the locals into a workforce
when the Africans gained independence from
London
they were left with their now resident
overseers
and they were more keen to be rid of them than of The British
and so they were sent 'back' to the UK
and not back to Asia
there is parallel to this an element within
anti-immigration sentiment
that is along the lines of
I'm up, pull the ladder up
To turn to the UK Civil Service
there is a clue in the name
Civil Service - Military Service
the problem is
you can't - generally - send a civil servant on a
suicide mission
if they become an embarrassment
and so to Oxford University
we have no stats on what proportion of the
First Division Association
the union of the top Whitehall civil servants
are Oxford graduates
we suspect it is very near 100 per cent
and Oxford University is forever bleating on about
wanting to broaden access
the thing about this is that it is an example of
both ends against the middle
their prime clients are the sort of people who
Own Scotland
or
half of the South Island of New Zealand
and the people they want to recruit are
people who's families
don't have a pot to piss in
they don't want to
broaden access to
The Middle Classes
they want students who are distinctive to an extent
way past weird
and what do they intend to do with those of their graduates
who own less than ten thousand acres of
Grouse Moor
?
they intend to establish them as
Senior Whitehall Civil Servants
so that they can
do the bidding of the university's paymasters
in developing countries graft, corruption is for
the benefit of politicians
in the UK
let us say up until fifty years ago
corruption was for the benefit of
Members of the House of Lords
and administered by Oxford University's
placemen within the civil service
Kenyan Asians are accustomed to being
turfed out of places where they are seen as
too clever by half
nd perhaps too honest and fair dealing to
understand the nuances of how to
keep the nobility on top
families who have previously
ruled East Africa on behalf of the
London House of Lords
may not be so keen to rule the UK
on behalf of Oxford University
However, in the present context
Oxford University has had almost half a century of
treating Whitehall like a
Steel Town
you pack ex-con(VICT)s and military drop outs to
sign on the pay roll at a steel works
if you are Oxford University you
give your fuck wit graduates a
Double First
and pack them off to Whitehall
and now the shit has really hit the fan
when, no longer can they say
nuffin to do wiv me guv
Brussels, The EU, Europe
take your problems there
this is a
private Tea Room

Here's a bit of social history in the making
we start from having three quarters of our children
overweight
then we have minimum unit price for alcohol
and we have
a sugar tax
and then we say
people on Universal Credit should
get their
almost pure sugar
foods
free from Food Banks
if minimum unit pricing for alcohol comes in in England
taking the next strand
shooting galleries - safe places for street drug consumption
will Food Banks
The Trussle Trust
be applying for
alcohol licences
so that they can distribute alcohol free to
people on Universal Credit
?
is the idea that
people from the underclass should be so fat that
decent middle class people of all ages
can out run them and avoid being knifed?

perhaps this is as good a place as any to consider a little discussed aspect of
slavery
and in particular the enslavement of native Africans
Africans were desirable as slaves in the
West Indies and The South of America
because they thrived in the climate and in the work
they were productive and not worked to death as
the victims of slave labour camps in the Second World War
The British are for ever attacked for
Imperialism and Colonialism
because they are seen as
rich
and
a soft touch for compensation
nobody is getting any compo from
The Nazis
and they won't get far with the Germans either
in fact...
UK payments to Europe could be seen as a German plot to
get The British to pay Germany's compensation debt to
Central and Eastern Europe
however, they rank with two other groups
The British constructively dismissed
Religious Dissenters
from England by allowing them religious freedom in America
The British settled Australia by sending convicts there
and how shall we say
from a non-conventional standpoint
certain Black tribes of Africa
did pretty much the same thing by selling members of
other Black Tribes of Africa
to Slave Traders
it can be said that Black people ended up in
America and The West Indies
as a result of
Ethnic Cleansing
of certain Black African Tribes
by other Black African Tribes
and that
White Men did not penetrate the
Heart of Africa
The Interior
before
The Coming of the Railways
simple test
anybody enslaved in Africa before the railways
was first captured by Black Africans

we like to tap into our Ricker's memories of things past.
things 19th century
those little sayings and such that time has forgot
at this time
February
from the Latin
a month named for the Roman
Festival of Purification
the old English name was
February Filldyke
February is the month when traditionally
water from snow melt in the mountains
flushes all of winter's debris from all the
local lowland water courses
all this flooding is
Nature's Spring Cleaning
Chuck out the Chintz
Latin Februarius, from Februa

there is some value in the saying
you can't make an omelette
without breaking eggs
the trouble with these sorts of things is when they are
over-extended
here we are trying to say
you can't have a healthy economy
without
creating pollution
and we see all along the way
safe waste disposal
and not
integrated waste elimination
for example
keep petrol and diesel but
add on catalytic converters
it hasn't 'worked'
carbon capture and storage is
cat converter level of
sticking plaster
as for the process industries in Redcar
when you burn a carbon compound
you get other carbon compounds as waste
when you transform some carbon compounds into
different , more useful, carbon compounds
if you are being efficient
your high conversion rates
mean
you are not creating carbon containing waste
Carbon Capture and Storage
could represent the
pitfall of being an
early adopter
you get lunbered with a huge mechanism for
producing catalytic converters
when
the market wants
hydrogen fuel cell stacks
every time somebody in government
or politics
says
we've consulted with The Industry
we think
Emperor's New Clothes
people in government have zero capacity to
evaluate advice on technical matters
and they think people with a lot of money are
either very clever or
Beloved of God
whenever some organisation
say
a village fete committee
are looking for officers
they will chose the resident with
the biggest car or the biggest house
as the treasurer
on the basis that
1 all the money the organisation will ever hold
would be petty cash to such a person
and so they wouldn't trouble to steal it
2 if they do get into financial bother
like the old time football club owners
they could reach into their pocket
like Mike Ashley
and bail the club out from
a day's spending cash
we really want to put this down as Ricker has remembered it
Back in the day
an entertainer called
Tommy Trinder
owned
Fuham Football Club
if Ant McPartland
of Ant and Dec fame
put half
of his kiss off for his former wife
into Newcastle United
they'd have a team with a number 9
never mind re-naming
Shearer's bar the
Number Nine Bar
they should retire the number 9 shirt
until they can spare the cash for somebody to
wear it

politicians - particularly in the run up to an election
are very busy people and they may not take much time to figure out
where people who are lobbying them
are coming from
say, you are a person with some influence
and you are approached by two people
one says
I'm not sure about my kid's future
should I encourage them be be
a dentist
or
a barrister - court advocate
?
and the other person comes to you and says
I'm very worried about my kid's health
she needs: a wonder drug, an expensive operation, psychotherapy
they are coming at you from different angles
one wants advice
the other wants
help
the trick of the professional lobbyist is to disguise
a plea for help
as
an offer of advice
essentially advice on how to be
popular
do what I want and EVERYBODY will love you

Here's a bit of social history in the making
we start from having three quarters of our children
overweight
then we have minimum unit price for alcohol
and we have
a sugar tax
and then we say
people on Universal Credit should
get their
almost pure sugar
foods
free from Food Banks
if minimum unit pricing for alcohol comes in in England
taking the next strand
shooting galleries - safe places for street drug consumption
will Food Banks
The Trussle Trust
be applying for
alcohol licences
so that they can distribute alcohol free to
people on Universal Credit
?
is the idea that
people from the underclass should be so fat that
decent middle class people of all ages
can out run them and avoid being knifed?

we like to tap into our Ricker's memories of things past.
things 19th century
those little sayings and such that time has forgot
at this time
February
from the Latin
a month named for the Roman
Festival of Purification
the old English name was
February Filldyke
February is the month when traditionally
water from snow melt in the mountains
flushes all of winter's debris from all the
local lowland water courses
all this flooding is
Nature's Spring Cleaning
Chuck out the Chintz
Latin Februarius, from Februa

there is some value in the saying
you can't make an omelette
without breaking eggs
the trouble with these sorts of things is when they are
over-extended
here we are trying to say
you can't have a healthy economy
without
creating pollution
and we see all along the way
safe waste disposal
and not
integrated waste elimination
for example
keep petrol and diesel but
add on catalytic converters
it hasn't 'worked'
carbon capture and storage is
cat converter level of
sticking plaster
as for the process industries in Redcar
when you burn a carbon compound
you get other carbon compounds as waste
when you transform some carbon compounds into
different , more useful, carbon compounds
if you are being efficient
your high conversion rates
mean
you are not creating carbon containing waste
as for the process industries in Redcar
Carbon Capture and Storage
could represent the
pitfall of being an
early adopter
you get lunbered with a huge mechanism for
producing catalytic converters
when
the market wants
hydrogen fuel cell stacks
every time somebody in government
or politics
says
we've consulted with The Industry
we think
Emperor's New Clothes
people in government have zero capacity to
evaluate advice on technical matters
and they think people with a lot of money are
either very clever or
Beloved of God
whenever some organisation
say
a village fete committee
are looking for officers
they will chose the resident with
the biggest car or the biggest house
as the treasurer
on the basis that
1 all the money the organisation will ever hold
would be petty cash to such a person
and so they wouldn't trouble to steal it
2 if they do get into financial bother
like the old time football club owners
they could reach into their pocket
like Mike Ashley
and bail the club out from
a day's spending cash
we really want to put this down as Ricker has remembered it
Back in the day
an entertainer called
Tommy Trinder
owned
Fuham Football Club
if Ant McPartland
of Ant and Dec fame
put half
of his kiss off for his former wife
into Newcastle United
they'd have a team with a number 9
never mind re-naming
Shearer's bar the
Number Nine Bar
they should retire the number 9 shirt
until they can spare the cash for somebody to
wear it

politicians - particularly in the run up to an election
are very busy people and they may not take much time to figure out
where people who are lobbying them
are coming from
say, you are a person with some influence
and you are approached by two people
one says
I'm not sure about my kid's future
should I encourage them be be
a dentist
or
a barrister - court advocate
?
and the other person comes to you and says
I'm very worried about my kid's health
she needs: a wonder drug, an expensive operation, psychotherapy
they are coming at you from different angles
one wants advice
the other wants
help
the trick of the professional lobbyist is to disguise
a plea for help
as
an offer of advice
essentially advice on how to be
popular
do what I want and EVERYBODY will love you

We do say over and over that The Labour
are very very niche, parochial, local to
North London
and so the following will probably not bother them at all
so long as they continue to
Weaponise the UK National Health Service
by constant references to the NHS failure
they seem to be saying that they introduced it but
The Tories have completely messed it up
they never actually say that because they
never criticise the structure or management of the NHS
they simply say
we - The Labour - will spend enough on it to get it
working properly
the self absorbed failing here is that
they are sending message to other countries that
either
a healthcare system in their country that mirrors the UK NHS
is
utterly unaffordable
or
fundamentally will not work
and so other countries don't have their own version of the NHS
and possibly if The UK Labour Party were
more constructive about the UK NHS
it could become a pattern for world governments
in this very important aspect of governance

we had the opportunity to see the
body language at a TV interview with
Ms Allred and one of her clients
we are not sure that Ms Alllred has the same motivation
with all her cases
the question of the airliner fuel dump
seemed to be all about the money
the movie mogul case seems to be more about power
we do note that it is a view amongst
wimin
that they want to break down the idea that a role is
men only
they then want equal representation
then they want all men demoted to the rank below
the presiding women
women instead of men
not
women and men together in equality and harmony
and this pre-supposes that the decisions that
powerful men make
are
arbitrary
and based on pure power
and in no way on
knowledge, expertise and experiences
meaning that wimin need nothing but arbitrary power
in order to replace powerful men
in that sense there are trends towards routinely
giving women better paper qualifications
and giving men
criminal records
rather like deducting 75 points from Saracens
to ensure that they are relegated
rather than matching the deduction to the
infringement
returning to movie mogul case
when we observe the demeanour of the client
we are driven to the conclusion that
in the mind of the plaintiff - the complainer
the concept of sexual assault
has replaced in their minds the concept of
a breach of contract suit
a woman who plots out in her mind
how a relationship will develop
and when it deviates or ends
taking the man to court is seen as having two
possible consequences
1 prolonging the association
2 some sort of
shot gun wedding
in the bad old days...
a single man was able to end proceedings against him by
marrying the plaintiff
because a wife could not testify against her husband
it was to give a deserted girlfriend this option
that this rule existed
how shall we say
uneducated, not clued up, feminists
agitated to have this weapon taken away from women
and really, a single woman
getting entangled with a man
in no position to marry her was not going to
get support from the courts

The average life expectancy of
females in
Redcar and Cleveland
in the most recent decade for which there are figures
fell by one month
there are three important things to say
this does not apply to males
who have seen life expectancy increase
Redcar and Cleveland includes
Greater Eston
and that includes
South Bank and Grangetown
there are a couple of health issues
one for female and one for male
since the 1970s and HASAWA
Health and Safety at Work Act
direct industrial disease
which has historically affected men more than women
has been in decline
and is the main driver of male life expectancy extension
on the female side
as we say that the numbers are in the
range of the early 80s
the bulk of deaths in the current data are
deaths of women who were born in the
late 1930s and early 1940s
we can say that both World Wars drove
female emancipation
when our Ricker were a lad
many things impinged on his mind in a superficial way
he knew about
tennis
and he had heard of
Billy Jean Moffat
later Billy Jean King
and British and Australian female tennis players
and so in his mind for whatever reason
when he heard about
a tournament in the USA being referred to as the
Virginia Slims
tournament
he assume that
Virginia Slims
was a revered retired female tennis player
who had had a tournament
named in her honour
in reality
Virginia Slims were the first cigarettes
marketed directly at
women
smaller, more dainty fags
sometimes the talismans of
emancipation
involve
buying the things that
harm men
and so it is traditional to say that
improvements in health for women have been
offset during the
second half of the 20th century
by women taking up men's bad habits
women came late to tobacco
and the negative effects have not yet fully
run through populations
minimum prices for alcohol and
punative taxes on tobacco are new ideas and
have not yet shown their worth

24th February 2020

we need to make a small but important point about
mesh implants
essentially you would not
sew together a garment without
providing the edges with
hems
it is almost certain that it is the practice of
cutting the mesh to size with scissors
that leaves sharp edges that cause
irritation
there are many tough but soft fabrics
but there should be some sort of
thermoforming to adjust the size of the implant
the surgeon should decide on the size and shape of the implant
using a template
and then feed the template into a mechanism
to have a bespoke implant with smooth edges
manufactured for immediate use
otherwise
the material used should be the same as is used in
stitches that dissolve over time and do not need to be
removed

Some people succeed in turning some small issue into
a life's work
this latest virus outbreak could have been
the culminating event
for the people who are the
sub section of the
it's all about genetics
brigade
whom we could describe as the
it's all about mutations, brigade
we imagine that there are teams of scientists
around the world
who have been - rather as astronomers awaiting
an eclipse or meteor strike
awaiting a
novel virus
so that they could track
how it mutated
and this virus has remained
stable
perhaps you remember
a former Prime Minster of the UK
Theresa May
being asked what was the naughtiest think she had
ever done
and she said it was running through a corn field
without permission
our Ricker has a related confession
when he was a teenager
they were still growing corn - wheat
on the land that is now the south side of
West Dyke Road
and at the junction of West Dyke Road
and
Kirkleatham Lane
Ricker stole
six half grown wheat plants - without permission
and he took them to school and
fitted them into rubber bungs in the tops of
old glass milk bottles
and set up the roots in water in the bottles
and each bottle had water in it that was
deficient in a major nutrient
and so a whole lot of kids attending biology class
watched them grow
interesting
of course the one with no deficiency in the
hydroponic water
outgrew the others
however, Ricker did not do the other experiment
he did not buy from the traditional school outfitters
heat seeds that had been
irradiated
subjected to nuclear radiation to induce
mutations
many schools may have bought them and done this experiment too
in the pictures, in the catalogue
the resultant plants looked a lot like the
nutrient deprived examples in Ricker's experiment
the radiantion had not
turned wheat into
beetroot
it had turned wheat into wheat that didn't grow very well
not so much mutated
as
not all there
because some of the embryo's cells had been
killed rather than changed
and since Ricker didn't do this experiment
just saw the advertising photos
he can't say whether the plants in the photos
grew normally but more slowly
and certainly can't say whether they could be
bred from
we understand that there is a well established tradition
in North East England
of providing free holidays to children who's
parents or grandparents
were living in
Pripiat - Chernobyl
at the time the nuclear reactor exploded
they do not come for specialist medical attention
and we do not wish to delve into the medical records of
the populations of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
but we are not aware of
novel animal life near Chernobyl or
strange diseases in Japan
however we are aware of
Minimata disease also called itae itae
in Japan as a result of water in the country being
contaminated with heavy metals from
industrial effluent
that is the fault of Japan
if they admit that
why would they cover up
mutations due to American bombing?
and so the mutation lobby retreat to their labs
huffing about like
astronomers after a meteor miss
saying
the next one will hit
we , the people who think outside boxes
don't exist in silos
think
more evidence of how slowly, if ever
biota evolves
because, because mutations are
random
and as such
very very very difficult to survive
think of it as
not - old style technology reference here
not swapping a single carb set up for
tripple twin choke Webbers
and hoping to get more power
more
waiting for the chassis to rust some more
and hoping that the
weight reduction will
improve the
power to weight ratio
mutations are not
design refinements
they are damage
that is why there are in
successful species
mechanisms to prevent them
PREVENT THEM
not PROMOTE them
and certainly not
direct them
there are mechanisms for the promotion of
change
but these are complex and are invoked in
times of stress
and a moment of
romping through a host population
is not a moment of stress
mutations are invoked as a
last desperate punt to create a new generation
weird enough to survived a catastrophe
what is actually happening is that
our planet used to be really quite big
but travel has become easier and
pockets of isolated population have had
relationships with local wildlife and their
passengers
and then suddenly
somebody decides that
travelling around the world and eating
weird stuff
will make a great TV show
and something that most people have no immunity to
is spread around the world
in ethnic markets and trendy restaurants
and to be brutal
we may refer to the
Tiny Tim paradigm
poor family, lots of kids, survival of the fittest
Tiny Tim dies in infancy
rich uncle Scrooge bungs poor family
a wedge of child benefit
Ting Tim lives
but remains severely handicapped
the sick, and particularly the
essentially defective
no longer slip quietly from the edges of society
they linger in a blaze of publicity
we should just add a note on
how the mutation theory 'experts'
have responded to the fact that
our Ricker was correct to say
you will find that there is no
difference between the genome of
healthy cells and tumour cells in individuals
they are now saying
this is the new mantra
the mutation occurred long before
the changes that represent the disease
sometimes bio-medical scientists have a big problem
working out what planet the rest of humanity
are on
the non medic thinks
Ricker is recalling an exchange with
geologist Mark Jordan
the non medic thinks that
people would live for ever if
they never had an accident
or encountered an infection
suggesting that
no mouse - no matter how pampered - has ever lived
more than ten years
because
different species are built with an expiry date
is shocking to the non-medic
people are built to reproduce
not to live for ever
there is a theory
often a 'scientific' theory can go unchallenged
untested because it seems like a waste of time to
duplicate the study
there is a theory that
the lifespan of species is defined
not in days or seconds
but in
heartbeats
the idea is that from birth - on average
excluding accident and illness
preventable shortenings
the natural lifespan of any species is
the same - on average - number of
heart beats
and so
a shrew lives at a hectic pace
with a naturally roaring racing heart rate
and an elephant or a Blue Whale has this
incredibly slow heart rate
and lives for a lot longer in terms of
solar time
and
people are the exception and
live for around four times as many heart beats as
any other species
so - by this theory - we a built to
reproduce and die by our twenties
but live on into our 80s
and only to species
humans and some sort of whale or dolphin
are the only ones to have
the menopause
to have a life beyond reproduction
despite the matriarchal
granny in charge social structures of
the likes of
merecats
to stay alive they have to have to potential to
breed

in the short term we may decide to use
quarantine
to do a Cnute type
hold back the tide
effort to
keep infections local
but world trade and tourism is a
fairly unstoppable phenomenon
the question is
are the deaths of a few hundred old folk
a price worth paying for
globalisation
or is that beside the point
are you using the inevitable demise of
a bunch of oldsters and a sprinkling of
younger otherwise defective people
a fact of life to be used as a weapon against
globalisation
?
clearly the latest exercise has had the effect of
suppressing communal gatherings
however, it has come at the cost of
damaging global trade
The Chinese authorities may have thought they could
continue to sell to the world
whilst locking down civil society
what happens next?
we have to expect that at some point
the emergency will have to be declared
over
we have seen before
repressive regimes who think that if they
lock down a society for while
the people will
get out of the habit of
holding mass street demonstrations
and everything will calm down
that will only really happen if the opportunity to
correct governmental errors is grasped
on the other hand
it is hard to see how a government could be more
generous than the French government
and yet
the French have failed to
get a life
and will just keep on with their
What have the Romans ever done for us?
mentality
this is otherwise referred to as
First World Problems
there is this
Gulliver's Travels
concept of
Big-endians against Little-endians
a nation engulfed in civil war over
which end of a boiled egg to open
Sheer versus Sunni in Islam
and the somewhat similar but different
how will you vote
I'm agin the government
whoever is in control
we want them out
so the Chinese authorities may be
in the phrase
hoist by their own petard
blown up by their own hand grenade
create the perception of a global health emergency
to suppress the Hong Kong riots
and destroy your export trade in the process
because
the Chinese authorities can't stop
The West
switching to
Thailand
or wherever
They may think they have a claim over
Taiwan
but not Japan or Thailand
and as an example
the camera maker
Nikon
designs the most prestigious mass amrket cameras
but they have the slightly cheaper ones
Made in China
and the more up market ones
Made in Thailand
The Chinese authorities
and the French Authorities
need to find a better way to
convince their people to
get a life
get with the programme

We remember the story of the man whose girlfriend
had an identical twin
and one day the twin is visiting and decides to
do the washing up
her sister's boyfrend comes across her
perhaps having just returned home and
approaching her from behind and mistaking her for his girlfriend
does what he would normally do
to his girlfriend
and so we move on to the line between
they all look the same to me
and
every man should be able to identify and name
every woman who has ever touched his life
however, we want to develop this matter of
identification and the BBC
we assume that this will have been pointed out
on social media but an expert being interviewed on the BBC
recently
was captioned as being from
The CASS Business School
we have given up on railing about the BBC
referring to NATO as Nato and on and on
this is the reverse
The Cass Business School
is
The Sir John Cass Business School
whilst on this topic...
the matter of job losses in
The City - of London
all that red braces and Porsche motors
people these days
commute to jobs in The City
the entire
Cannery Wharf
at least the Americans have the decency
not to spell that after the little yellow bird
The whole Cannery Wharf development
and the earlier
Barbican housing development on City Road
were designed
not to earn vast quantities of foreign exchange
but to take from the dole
the sons of the dockers
made redundant from the docks of
The now non-existent
Pool of London
when it was too narrow, too small
and large modern ship could only get up river
as far as Tilbury - even before
the Thames Barrier or Barrage
like the one on the Tees
by the John Lloyd sports centre in Stockton
second best? white water canoe slalom course in
the UK the other one only being better because it's
Nearer to London
to
gentrify
the area
fifty years ago
Central London was knackered
when at Durham University
Ricker took a car full of students to
Newcastle to visit the
Hancock Museum
and Richardson
a lad from London
asked
where are all the
bomb sites
London ain't all built up like this
anybody who has seen
Grainger Town in Newcastle
would have to admit it is rather spectacular
whether it is actually
Portland Stone
or a local equivalent is a mere detail
and so
in the natural scheme of things
the government having overseen the
re-birth of London
honestly is
looking for a new project
Grainger Town is not it

Sometimes we get a
blast from the past
that makes the present
make more sense
we are not the only people exercised about
poor take up of vaccinations
Ricker remembers that his dad had
four or five neatly spaced scars about the size of
a very small coin
on one of his upper arms
these were the result of
Army Service
to Ricker that indicates that
at some point around a hundred years ago
the army had been experimenting with
vaccinations and that they had been giving
sub-dermal
as opposed to the modern
intra-muscular
vaccinations
all of that said this is just background to the current point
Military Service and vaccinations
we, the media, blame a particular doctor and his theories about
autism
when Tommy was at war
many of the cannon fodder
were diagnosed with
shell shock
seems appropriate
perhaps it was medical black humour
any road up
we take all these things together and we come to an
interesting theory about
why anti-vac has been given such a run for it's money
over the years
When troops returned from the
First Gulf War
their
Shell Shock
was termed
Gulf War Syndrome
and to distract from the idea that it was
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
the idea was put around that they were suffereing from
side effects of the vaccinations they had been given
at embarkation for the Middle East

our Ricker is very old
and remembers things from the past
a couple of memories from very early
Ricker's dad was very old when Ricker knew him
one day Ricker's parents decided he should ahve a pet
so they saw an advert for a rabbit
and they went to a council estate in Middlesbrough
to buy this rabbit
she looked OK a sort of
dutch fur pattern but she was
stroppy
later there were other rabbits
male and female
Ricker cannot remember ever asking anybody to
buy him a pet
when he bought pets of his own they were
tropical fish
to speak of this first rabbit
she was stroppy with Ricker
he had the wounds to show for it
mostly from the claws not the teeth
one day Ricker had a memory etched into his memory
a rabbit memory
his original rabbit running around the greenhouse with
a baby hanging half way out of her bottom
she was
NOT GOING TO BE A MUM
Ricker has a dread of having kids and then when they are
five
them going to school
and him being arrested for having told them things
he shouldn't have told them
kids blab
Ricker had things available that are not available
to the modern child
and so for a while he kept the babies in a bottle
pickled, so to speak
these days Ricker is amazed to see how
friendly pets seem to be
his experience of pets was that only the dog
showed the least sign of affection
and so the question is
did Ricker have
a lesbian rabbit?
she was a bit smaller that the other female rabbits
but she never wanted anything to do with them
are we bundling two separate things together?
are
I don't want to be female
and
I want a girlfriend
the same thing?
it is a long time since we wrote about
intersex
we have written about how to end up with a gay boy
what we have not discussed recently is
if baby is born with six fingers
it will be whisked off to have the extras snipped off
before mum gets a sight
more centrally if the gender is not clear
from the outset the mantra would be
make IT into a little girl
by removing any less than convincing
boy bits
this is where language is a barrier to understanding
a person may be told
you were operated on soon after birth because
you had not fully developed
they may conclude that this means they were born
early, pre-mature
but those words may cover a situation where
despite being full term
their bits were unconvincing
and were removed so that they would fit in well
well enough
as girls
or 'girls'
and until relatively recent times
that would be that
no counselling
no hormone therapy
just, well
no sexting
another reason to
never photograph children
possibly the only reason for never photographing children
what the eye don't see
normality
the heart don't grieve
if you've never seen normal
you won't know you are
abnormal
the other memory that comes to his mind at present is
back when Ricker was a child there were no houses on
Mersey Road
but they were coming
the memory is of bare earth by the side of the road
Ricker's friend Edward was with him
they came across a
dead raw golly
a raw golly was any sort of tiny baby bird
that had not grown any feathers yet
Richer was fascinated
Edward was fearful
Don't touch it
the memory is significant because
Edward was Edward Dahouski
probably spelt wrongly
but later
Ela Teralak
told Ricker that Dahowski was a
good Polish name
and he went on to do two things
he became an RAF officer cadet
medical student at Newcastle Medical School
where Ricker was a dental
and Edward killed himself by
wrapping the Austin Healy the RAF paid for
around a lamp post
despite his father's service to the nation
was it wise to send a boy
too squeamish to poke an dead blackbird chick with a stick
to medical school?
people are supposed to be able to answer when asked
where were you when you heard about nine eleven?
Ricker remembers exactly where he was when he heard
Edward's dead
Someone had come to the door and told Ricker's mum and
Ricker was in the garage with the door shut
'playing' with his Bunsen burner and his chemicals
and none of those pretty girls ever got to be
a dentist's wife
not Ricker the Dentist's wife, anyway
here's something with which to amuse your friends
why there is there no word for
a baby rabbit
like cub or chick or puppy?
it's because
a rabbit is a baby
cony or coney
hare - leveret
coney - rabbit
connection to Coney Island?
no idea
we think of rabbits as all so cute that we refer to them all
whatever their age
by their baby name
we are the sort of people who try to stick to
constructive criticism
in other words if we don't care whether you
improve or not
we will
let you hang as you grow
we think that refers to
pleaching fruit trees
or not bothering
pruning for shape
so we do take time to consider
UK law enforcement and the BBC
you see our Ricker remembers the days of
TOGS and the DG
we can't remember what TOGS stood for
but it had a lot to do with
Terry Wogan
or Woebegone
and the DG was
The Director General of the BBC
heaven forefend that what the BBC needs is
a revival of Irish influence...
Two generations of the
still alive
will remember two BBC children's TV presenters
we should say
ITV always gives up too easily
at one time - a very long time ago
apart from Crackerjack
children's Tv was
BBC Blue Peter
ITV Magpie was that B A Robertson?
and so
Blue Peter - Valerie Singleton
and
The Ellis lass - Janet?
and neither of them were married
and we are way off piest here
Wasn't it
Sophie Ellis Bexter
Janet Ellis's daughter??
anyway
our most significant Blue Peter quote was
Valerie Singleton
I've never had a husband of my own
but I've had loads of other people's
how the hell did we get from that to
hash tag metoo?
and the traditional wisdom is that
every 'generation' rebels against the previous one
and so what will the generation that rebels against
metoo
do?
at a more serious level
we see a wave of 'progress' spread across the world
we see people trying to be stay at home missionaries
setting up foodbanks in the prosperous UK
where were they in the days of
Cathy Come Home
when there was real hardship in the UK?
what happens is
whatever the personal peccadilloes of the staff
raising money for
Oxfam - the Oxford Campaign against Famine
is a whole lot easier than
introducing
contraceptive and obstetric care to deprived communities
and so in the 1960s in the UK
child mortality plummets
women no longer have to have a dozen pregnancies in order for
two of their offspring to out live them
and there is a baby boom gap between
a sharp drop in child mortality
and
universal contraception for mothers
we won't try to research the precise context and quote but
a Cardinal or Pope
asked about what he thought of a historic change
a century earlier
said
it's too early to tell
The Roman Catholic Church still opposes
contraception
because it thinks that the benefits of
modern medicine
may be a flash in the pan
over geological time
and so to the current context where
despite many clergy we have
same sex marriage and opposite sex civil pertnerships
and trans sexual women
being female is essentially safer than being male
and so we start out with more women than men
and then
every trans sexual woman is one less available husband
every male to male single sex marriage or civil partnership
is two less available husbands
three things in
having it all
career, kids, husband
in broad terms women share the first two
there career is in some sort of team
their kids go to school and grow up
how long before people start to see the positive side of
sister wives
?
share the good straight blokes around a bit
get yourself a dose of the
most impressive bloke you can get your hands
all five of them?
on
referencing ads for dog chews relating to how a dog's mouth
is it's hand
and not some gay guy or absolute wretch - misogynist - that
nobody else wants
there's a choice here
between
fighting to keep some monster away from your kids
and
competing for your kids to have some time with their dad
despite him having so many more...

17th February 2020

Perhaps we will begin with one of our
grammar-punctuation diversions
any sensible hairdresser may well put a notice in her window saying
walk in Ladies cuts available
some may say
that should be
Walk-in Ladies' cuts available.
however
others may say
Walk-in Lady's cuts available
you see
Ladies' Cuts
suggests
you need to buddy up and be accommodated
in batches
it's a double plural
On 12th February 2020
Redcar's new Tory MP stood up in Parliament
and read out a question to the Prime Minister
that had been written for him
we want him to succeed
we don't want him to perpetuate myths about Redcar
This month a chap was found dead in bed in a house converted to
bedsits in Coatham Road
at least 8 police vans were used to block major roads in the town
on the off chance that there were
suspicious circumstances
there were none
it's rather like all those scientists
who train in something obscure
because there is no competition for places and funding
and universities like to boast
a full set
and then when they get a doctorate or professorship
try to convince the world that their specialism can be
applied to
cancer research
wooden tops
for
cops
and then
the police become
an army of occupation
in their own land
perhaps we should reference
Caroline Flack
at this point
there is this point about - movie reference - precogs
but more generally the idea of
nipping things in the bud
conflicts with the idea that
just because acorns can grow into oak trees
doesn't mean we should
not plant beans
where we don't want oak trees to grow
never mind Tasers
ditch the
hair trigger
and don't use the real world for
training exercises
or every crank call as an excuse to stage one anywhere
if the police had more than 1,000
significant cases a year
they would probably want to learn about
triage
from the ambulance service
and just for scale and context...
in the UK
and to address the idea that
witness intimidation could
damage conviction rates...
perhaps we should use the cases of
Caroline Flack
and her boyfriend
and the Prime Minister and his girlfriend
clearly the latter is a case where to supposed victim
has not
changed her mind
but the credibility and motivation of a third party witness
is what is at stake
so we take Janice Webster and her assistant Tanya Nelson
and we accept that Mrs Webster was under present arrangements
entirely entitled to have
anybody arrested for contacting her assistant
if she did not approve of the contact
the law used to state that
a wife could not give evidence
against her husband
now it seems that a person may not give evidence
in support of their friend or partner
to give a little context
population around 60 million
between a half and three quarters of a million people
die each year
and of those
around
200 women are unlawfully killed
and around 400 men
1 you can't lock down a town
especially one the size of Redcar
every time somebody dies
2 for those who like targets...
consider three statistics
the number of murders solved
the number of murders prevented by law enforcement
the number of suicides caused by law enforcement

Recently there was a
current affairs short
about Redcar
broadcast on the BBC
the voiceover stated that
Redcar is a town that was built to house steelworkers
and their families
we mostly doubt that there is any point in correcting such reports
but hey ho
Redcar has had several
'works'
that could be described as steel works
in the looser sense of including
ironworks, steelworks, and rolling mills under the heading
South Bank - part of Greater Eston, a part of
Redcar and Cleveland had a steel works and that has
coke ovens and a BOS plant
closed for the past five years
a BOS plant is a Basic Oxygen Steelmaker
Lackenby has rolling mills - operational to this day
and a concast idle for the past five years
a concast is a continuous casting plant
it turned out red hot steel like toothpaste from a tube
Redcar has an ironworks - which fed the BOS plant
in South Bank with molten iron for conversion into
steel
The people who worked at South Bank
lived in Eston
it used to be a stand alone local authority
but is now a part of
Redcar and Cleveland
Eston Urban District Council
no longer exists
we have never figured out who
Long was
but
Sir Arthur Dorman's company was called
Dorman Long
and they made the steel for
The Tyne Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Bridge
they took their iron from South Bank iron works
they built
The BOS plant and Lackenby Rolling Mills
and to house the people who worked at Dorman's
they built
Dormanstown
They did not build Redcar
Dormanstown is a ward within Redcar and Cleveland
it used to have 3 councillors
due to depopulation
it now has two councillors
2,000 workers at the Redcar combine of 'steelworks'
Population of Redcar and Cleveland 130,000
just sayin'
and
just for the record
Titus Salt built workers housing for his factory
but Dormans were the first people in the world
well in the UK at least
to build 'works' retirement bungalows for
their pensioners
They are in use to this day
in the 1970s
British Steel
demolished South Bank iron works - all but the coke ovens
and built
Redcar iron works to supply molten iron to
Lackenby BOS Plant, Concast and Rolling Mills
The Lackenby Concast was built at the same time as Redcar iron works
and Lackenby Mills were converted from
Coal to natural gas
for the re-heat furnaces
Redcar is an integrated steelworks
if it all worked together as built
and didn't import steel from Scunthorpe
integrated means in this case
vertically integrated and means
it can turn out beams
and if the gear was put back in the shed
strip steel
without re-heat
the material never going cold from
blast furnace to rolling mill

and the thing that got skipped over in the
vox pop
the old woman telling it like it was
she said
approximately
in them days you left school and you went to
ICI or British Steel
and you had a job for life
ICI was Imperial Chemical Industries
and be sure
you didn't have to work at Dormans
to live in Dormastown
you were just as likely to work at ICI
and that's now called
Wilton International Process Park
and Louise who used to live next door to out Ricker
went straight from school well after a secretarial course
probably at Cleveland Tech
to work in the
Wilton Hilton
that was not a hotel and nothing to do with Hilton
but was what they called the
ICI Wilton admin offices
so the old woman in the clip
put ICI before British Steel
as a lot of people would
but the media never
make a peep
about the demise of ICI
and the Huntsman takeover and the Ineos takeover
and just to say how long ago Louise's first day at work was
that day she was asked to
send a fax
these days that would only happen in the NHS

this is where our
living history resources falls down
we know that there is now
Redcar and Cleveland Community Heart
and that it is built on the site of the former
Sir William Turner's Coatham Grammar School
but we can't recall where
Redcar Council offices were 'originally'
The library was where the doctors now is and
the fire station was nearby
can't quite picture the council offices
what we do know is that Redcar came under
North Riding of Yorkshire County Council
and when it was taken out of that
it was a district of Cleveland County
and we don't recall whether it was in or outside of
Teesside
what we do know is that
under Cleveland County
there were
Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbrough, and Langthingy
and Langthingy District Council had it's offices
and council chamber
in the former premises of
Eston Urban District Council
and when Langthing became a
Unitary Authority - A County Borough
it had it's name changes to
Redcar and Cleveland
and moved it's administration to Redcar
and the old Eston Town Hall has been demolished
and so really it would be about fair to say that
Eston was built to house the steelworkers
and they had South Bank, Grangetown, Eston, Normanby, ormesby
Greater Eston was a whole lot bigger than
Dormanstown
and Dormanstown is on the Wilton side of the Trunk Road
There are a lot of people who would like to put
Greater Eston into Middlesbrough
but the problem is
Redcar was put into Greater Eston
but Greater Eston did not have space to grow
hemmed in by
Middlesbrough, the works - British Steel and ICI
and
The Eston Hills
and so Redcar out grew Eston and the balance of power shifted
and in parliamentary terms
Mr Proudfoot was the Tory MP for
Cleveland and Whitby and we think that it was in the days of
Mo Mowlam that bits of Langthingy
now called Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
swapped from East Cleveland to Redcar
we think that could have been
Marske-by-the-Sea
and Jim Tinn as the Labour MP for Eston
and so
it's more about boundary changes and personalities
the people of Guisborough
loved the late Ashok Kumar - the MP for
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
because he was working at
British Steel, Redcar
completing a Ph.D.
at the time he was first elected for The Labour
so this swap, this small change in the Red Wall
is not very much about an electorate lending their votes
but genuine change
we've written this up before but
it has no
cut through
with journalists
in the 1970s
in the vicinity of Eston Recreation Ground
there were four secondary schools
St Peter's Roman catholic
Stapylton
Sara Metcalf
Gillbrook
now St. Peter's is offering to take non-Roman Catholics
to survive
Stapylton is housing estate
and Sara Metcalf has closed
some locals are very attached but
we think it and the nearby Eston Town Hall
will have been demolished by now
four secondary schools condensed into
one and a half
Gillbrook has a new PFI building
St. Peter's soldiers on
they call Gillbrook something like Hillview
the name matters not
and from the inside Ricker viewed the panic over jobs that
moving from teaching kids in corridors
to closing schools caused
and so we have
Janet
graduate biology teacher feeling that
future security lay in
social work
less kids
more one to one contact
there were NO classroom assistants in
Cleveland County
in the mid 1970s
so when work dies up you big up the concept of
deprivation
but
The Pill
contraception
leading to smaller family size
goes hand in hand with
smaller workforce numbers
there were - are
two kids per mum
in contrast to the
baby boom
when there could have been
twelve kids per mum
the hoards of the
lumpen proletariat
never got born
after the mid 1970s
the poiliticians
have not clocked the change in family size
and they can't compute
a lass from Stapylton, School Eston
scoring a Ph.D. at Durham University

and so the next question is
who will replace
Tintin
as
Bond
and what is it with that BBC sting about
the lad, his mum, his watch, his dad
and a sun beam?

There is a new concept in healthcare
that you may not know about
it has developed quite rapidly over the past 40 years
it is called
something along the lines of
pre-hospital medicine
anybody aged under 30 has probably known little else
and so a little historical insight
or context
when the UK NHS was founded
most people who considered themselves to be ill
took themselves off to their GP or Family Doctor
most people whom somebody else thought was ill
were scooped up and driven to the nearest hospital
by people who were effectively
Uber drivers with
uniforms, a stretcher, and a van
at best their other equipment would amount to
a First Aid Kit
containing some bandages to stop or cover up
bleeding
there are ambulances like that on the road today
sent to low priority cases
per-hospital medicine began with
para-medics
it has branched out into
mobile trauma doctors and air ambulances
there is a distinction here
in the old days
when population densities were lower

we must quote the little amusement in a TV show title
there is a children's animated series about a vet
an animal doctor, called
Dr. Fetch
and so the series is called
Fetch the Vet
as in
Jones the Post
Must be Welsh then

back in the day this concept of
the Hit and Run accident
grew out of the idea that anybody lucky enough to
operate a motor vehicle
had a civic duty to stop at any accident scene
or if
flagged down
and either scoop up the patient or
drive the the surgery and
Fetch a doctor
anybody being flagged down now would be
expecting a car-jacking
that sort of General Practice mix of
Private and Pro Bono (Publico)
was what we had before the NHS
The initial response or effect of bringing in the NHS waS
GPs began to write drug prescriptions
initially, all prescriptions were free to everybody
a pill for every ill - and free
this had a slightly perverse consequence
'poor people' got powerful, effective
but often addictive drugs
and rich people decided all these prescription drugs
were free
so they must be rubbish
so they developed the market in
alternative medicine
which must be better
because you had to pay for it
out of this
and because community doctors did not have to do
what para-medics began to do
GPs developed a role of
not so much
advocate
fro their patients
but
Personal Shopper
in the healthcare market
and that is essentially where we are today
and if the GP refers you to the
wrong specialist
in the hospital
that cannot be corrected by the hospital
the individual teams within the hospital can
look over the fence
but they can't trespass on another specialism's turf
somehow they have to encourage the patient to
go back to the GP and
start the whole process over again
with a more appropriate referral
if you have diabetes
you need to be seen by
BOTH
an endocrinologist
and
a vascular surgeon
both of three???
AND
an eye specialist
hence the
British Heart Foundation
saying they fund diabetes research

You may have noticed that we appear to have had
a little down time
and not much to show for it...
we have had a little time to think about
Londoners
we will step back a bit from that and try to think about
the differences between men and women
if you make a slightly different distinction and put
straight males on one side
and women and gay men on the other
males seem to regard themselves as
integrated
females seem to regard
their bodies
in the way that males regard
their cars
there is a tattoo parlour in Redcar that has a
promotional vehicle - two
one says
my other car is a REAL Mini
the other has a really great slogan that we forget
but it is an improvement on
altered girls
men get tattoos to
show how brave they are
or to honour a person or organisation
very important to them
women seem to go for
anything from a new hair do
to
cosmetic surgery
in order to be somebody new
and that leads us to
Londoners
on the one hand they
whinge constantly about how much more money
the government should be spending to
try to make the place fit to live in
and how government money spent elsewhere is
completely wasted
all that Londoners do and say seems calculated to
convince themselves that they
made the right decision
moving there
let's face it
anybody who lived there over fifty years ago
has
done a Boycie
bought a chunk of the
Home Counties
with the proceeds of
renting out the
East End hovel they were born in
no doubt our ex-chancellor owns
homes on four continents
but did you see the
mid-terraced shoe box
he uses as a week-day home
when he was doorstepped after resigning
no wonder Tweedledee was slow to
give up his
Grace and Favour Home
when he gave up being
Foreign Secretary
such an opportunity the Germans gave us in the
Second World War
ask the historians what
Teessiders did with
Cannon Street in Middlesbrough
Industrial Estate
replaces
Slum Housing
Mean Streets
and now the grandchildren of the denizens of those
mean streets
squabble about
where to put the three cars that belong to
each detached villa
SOMEWHERE ELSE

watching the BBC is like watching a
Natural History series
watch the little weasels squirm
there was a thing called
BBC Sport
it was told to move to
Salford, a part of Manchester
and it did
BUT
then they invented the
Sports Business Department
and even though most of the sport business stories involve
Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United, Manchester City
the BBC Sports Business department is
in London

a SpAd is a
Special Advisor
a SPAD
is a
Signal Passed At Danger

we do try to keep
an ear to the ground
and here we are considering the suggestion that
Teesside has a very high proportion of
children in local authority care
we do not excuse any authority figure who stands between
any little girl and a thorough understanding of her
reproductive biology
that aside
because we don't think that is more of a problem on Teesside than
elsewhere
there appear to be two main reasons for a mum
giving up their child for adoption
again
discounting those children removed from their parents for their
own - child - safety
in the context of
child benefit
at an early stage
that is pre-pregnancy
young women may in the spirit of
the parallel
Future Homemakers of America
a genuine strand in the US education system within living memory
be under pressure to
give us the grand bairns
never mind who the father is
this strand is all about
the cash and social housing that comes from being a mother
the other strand is
I really really really fancy that guy and
those other girls have sex with him
but if I can make him a baby...
I'll have one over on them
and a third strand is
children born with severe handicap - disability
children come up for adoption when
let's take a specific example
is it a Bowie quote
took him minutes
took her nowhere
heaven knows she'd a taken anything
little lassie gets laid down on the floor by the
lad she is besotted with
and he shoves a baby up her
and all goes well for a while
but then
he moves back to Scarborough
his sister doesn't like her
and she kicks the girlfriend and the baby out
so the baby goes up for adoption
since it has filed to secure
the desired long term relationship
for the mum
and in all of this we are trying to say
the causes of instability in the lives of children
cannot all be put down to
maw monay

Some confusion has been reported around
bank overdraft charges
whatever the motivations of the various parties
what is happening is that
bank - major High Street bank - debit cards
are being converted into
credit cards
customers - especially the vulnerable
will need to check as to whether
suddenly their debit card
allows them to have access to
debt
at credit card levels of interest
Sometimes we have a little difficulty
deciding whether a story is an
urban myth
in all his long life our Ricker has never quite 'got'
the point of
decaff coffee
if you don't want coffee why are you drinking it?
is it just a carrier for
an excuse for drinking milk, cream and sugar?
we are getting to a point here
perhaps decaff coffee has some sort of
TASTE
a little different from
hot milk
with his dental background...
Ricker is a bit put off
a number of soft drinks that say they contain
phosphoric acid
Coca Cola
is one of those
and we are not about to try to find out whether
Pepsi Cola
contains phosphoric acid
we have a solid fact about Coca Cola
in the 19th century
Coca Cola was called COCA Cola because
it contained extract of
coca leaves
and then in the early years of the 20th century
they had to do a kind of fix
they had to put an extract of coca leaves in Coca Cola
so that they could continue to call it Coca Cola
but they had to remove the cocaine
so at that time
and here is the uncertainty
perhaps to this day
Coca Cola is the Cola equivalent of
decaff coffee
so if billions of people really really like
the taste of coca leaves
does that pre-dispose them to
like cocaine?
like it, if presented with it
rather than
seek it out
in the first place
it does not seem any more fanciful than
the idea that marihuana
causes psychosis
rather than psychotics liking hash

12th February 2020

here is a question
why to Kier Hardy
MP for Euston and Kings Cross
Starmer
whatever
agin HS2? nostalgia
after all the half of his constituency that was
listed to be demolished to make way for it
has already been demolished
we think that it's more about those people we own
batches of
gold plated shoe boxes in London
and are afraid that people will
weigh up the cost of a
Birmingham to London season ticket
against the rent on a converted
shoe cupboard in London
it looks very
I'm up
pull the ladder up
and people who own a hobby farm in
Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire
are not so much bothered about
having to play a bit of swapsied with their neighbours
to make sure all of their
Polo Paddocks
are on the same side of the railway
but the threat to their
Buy to Lets
in the capital

the stated aim of
Universal Credit
is to
make work pay
Arbite Macks Frie
get a job and the state will leave you in peace
at the same time the likes of
the living wage
and
mandatory works pension enrolment
mean that employers can't afford to pay many people
much more than the living wage
some commentators
say
nobody should have an income
less than two thirds of
the middle wage between the living wage
and the maximum wage they pay to anybody they employ
many people have heard of the concept of
the manager in charge of paper clips
the Japanese Window Men - employed to sit at a desk and
stare out of a window all day
and the men who for a hundred years
signed on at the steel works instead of
The Labour Exchange
this erodes the differential between
those who
work for a living
and those who keep under the RADAR
by turning up at a social club and drawing their
Dole with Dignity wages, and pensions
and then comes the potential for conflict
the dole with dignity employee
goes down the shops or the pub
and starts splashing the cash at
the bar staff and shop staff
and trades persons attending their home
and creating a stink
threatening the worker because
they are not working well enough
or showing enough
respect
to their customer
this means
make work pay
gets replaced with
make having a job pay

when a really important - rich, famous - customer
or a valued regular customer
arrives at a restaurant
they may - if it is not a very high end establishment
we divert here to do a Mark Jordan story
Mark Jordan was the son of a local
secondary school head teacher
and Ricker wasn't his best friend
mark was one of those people who over the years had been
instructed to make sure Ricker wasn't feeling
left out
anyway
for a while Mark was married to a
South East Asian wife
but before that he was an
oil company geologist
and on an occasion Ricker
put him up in his dorm room at City University in central London
this guy was going to marry a South East Asian wife
and so Ricker took him to a Chinese restaurant for a meal
and Mark ordered
chips
despite them not being on the menu
anyway
if you order something that is not on the menu
you will disrupt the work flow in the kitchen
now we switch to the streets of England around half a century ago
back then nobody had heard of a
pooper scooper
Ricker's Aunties - thirty years ago - lived on a posh estate of
retirement bungalows
in Scarborough
and they referred to their road as
dog shit alley
on top of that
fifty years ago
the streets were home to
quite a number of
feral dogs
who were not as discrete as today's
urban foxes
in those days a sickly dog was often described as
suffering from
distemper
here's the thing
quite a lot of the canine deposits to be seen around were
white
lacking in colour
these dogs
including the ones sharing a home with humans
were riddled with infections
now we have to bring in another strand of this story
regarding people and shall we say
four legged friends
the cellular elements of our and their blood
are generated in the
bone marrow
birds have such light bones Lord knows where they do this
perhaps a liver style organ
when a mammal
is confronted with an infection
they will have that infection kill a lot of their
white blood cells
to keep up the fight
we, they
have to replace those white cells and we
put in industrial sized purchase orders for the replacements
to our bone marrow
and, well, orders for new
oxygen carrying red blood corpuscles get
back ordered
and
the destruction of the dead white blood cells
does not add any colour to our excrement
red blood corpuscles get battered around as they circulate
unless you have
sickle cell anaemia
you RBCs will be
hydrodynamic
like aerodynamic for in a fluid
like
well most like
clays as used in clay pigeon shooting
a lot like
Frisbees
but broadly like a
dinner plate
despite that
after around 80 days they are ready for
recycling and they have
haemoglobin in them
and that's
red
and when you get rid of it
it turns your stool, your number 2s
the colour of
Sunderland's
Stadium of Shite
but if you are not managing to build new
RBCs
your turds will get
paler and paler
and if you are in this state
BEFORE
you catch the influenza
you gonna need to get on the oxygen
to help out yer battered old
Ford Escort
RBCs
and so
after the First World War
millions of people
died from a version of the 'flu
that these days
people shrug off in a day or two
not because the 'flu has MUTATED into a benign form
but because they are generally a lot fitter than
a population that has just gone through
four years of
Total War
and now
there are two groups of people - in China - who are
dropping like flies from something
Brits will hardly notice
1 people with lings knackered by levels of air pollution
that Brits haven't seen for 40 years
2 people who's hearts can't circulate their knackered RBCs
fast enough
and another thing
the immune system has two divisions
you could say
one lot poison the pathogen
and the other lot
eat it
'immunity' depends on the poisoners
until we develop specific poisoners
that we call
developing immunity
we depend on the swallowers
search
macrophage
which are they ones that die of
indigestion

The essence of being
closet gay
is a pretence that you are not gay
and people who were
and some still are
closet gay
find interaction
no matter how intimate
a chore
and so
whether or not they are
actively gay
they seek to minimise the burden involved in
simulating
being straight
and so they will do all they can to limit the scope of
straight behaviour
to make it easier for the disgusted to
simulate
once they are
out gay
they no longer give a hoot for
what the straights do
and so the more gays that are out
the quieter the life for straights

11th February 2020

at this point we will introduce the concept of
mitochondrial DNA
in humans - and similar
the egg is a cell
the sperm is not a cell
red blood corpuscles are
blood cells that are so packed with
oxygen carrying haemoglobin
that there is no room for anything else
and so they are corpuscles
not cells
they carry no DNA
a sperm is the reverse
a sperm is a packet of DNA
a half set
with
an outboard motor
nothing else
this means that you get
half your DNA from each parent
BUT
ALL of the gubbins
in all of your cells
COME FROM YOUR MOTHER
and that includes your
mitochondria
in theory
because that outboard motor is
active and has components
and they may include mitochondria
we aren't researching that
and so
in genealogy - family history taking
we say
the DNA from the nucleus of your cells
comes from both sides of your family - equally
but your mitochondrial DNA is the female line
people have suggested that if you
come out the way you went in
you will be contaminated with
mummy's little helpers
on the way
but if you come out by
C section
you miss out on gaining the hitch hikers
and so to the squirrels
if
red squirrel babies have
squirrel pox virus particles
as part of their initial
gang of hitch hikers
they will, as is the nature of the thing
regard squirrel pox virus
in the same way - not exactly
as
mummy's hitch hiker mitochondria
and
this
scraping the barrel of Ricker's memory here
he thinks that
poisonous toads are an example of
a type of species that
don't produce the toxin themselves
but deliberately implant something
a fungus or bacterium or something
into their skin
so that their skin is toxic but they
don't mess with their own skin so they are not
poisoned
but anything that bites them
is
when you load up yer
poison arrow
with
curare
you wipe the arrow on the toad's skin
you don't
spatter it with
blood of toad
and so
if we take on board a virus
we keep it safe
and if a predator takes a bite
they get sick
and leave us alone in future
BUT
if we get stressed
winter chills, bereavement, Sunderland scoring
another bloody goal
we loose control of our
ferocious beasts
our mercenaries
launch a coup attempt
and they turn on us
and we get the snuffles
or in the case of
Norovirus
something we would wish on our enemies

we are very pleased that
Philip Schofield has
come out
he's rescued himself from the
Tory Bliar Trap
what we hope is that future generations of
gay men will not be saying
as so many of these closet gays have in the
not so distant past
in effect
if there weren't no paedos
nobody would be gay

we have a couple of gratuitous comments to make about the
don't see too well
celebrity skater
people make considered decisions
they weigh things up and come to a conclusion
many many moons ago the experts debated
should it be
visually impaired
or
vision impaired
and we decided on
vision impaired
and a couple of
fuck wit ice skaters
decide on
partially sighted
you just give up
we are supposing that the
runner who is tethered to a guide
may have
ret pig
she may not
retinitis pigmentosa
can be treated by
injecting
stem cells into the retina
or gene therapy
via virus transfer
it may not work
but it's worth a try
and we love
Christine and Jane Torville really

and a little side line on
infection control
our Ricker worked for a while on
Kensington High Street, London
opposite the
Inn on the Park
one day this patient came in wearing
very dark dark glasses
when she took them off
the whites of her eyes were
black
she was elderly in the 1980s
at some point she had decided to
or been advised to
as we say
instil
silver nitrate solution
eye drops into her eyes
given she may have been born
as long as 120 years ago
she may have had an eye infection
before there were any of
vaccines, antibiotics, antivirals
if she was very rich
a befit toddling around
Kensington High Street
silver nitrate eye drops may have been her only option
to save her sight at the time...
wearing silver
and perhaps copper
but especially silver
especially as rings on fingers
is a simple, safe, semi-permanent
safeguard against infection
certainly indicated for anybody with
a compromised immune system
three things about this
gold does not count
this puts silver
nose and lip rings
on the table
do people with
mercury amalgam tooth fillings
suffer less respiratory infections
and following on from that
do people who have amalgam fillings removed
and replaced with dentures
see a spike or general increase in
respiratory infections

10th February 2020

This should be
a new blog
we hope that the original
very very very long
file is still available

people in the UK get their
science
from the movies
and in respect of the widest collective of people
who have seen the same
science influencing movie
lots of people have seen
Horton hears a Hoo
there have been lots of derivatives of
a Marvel Comics style story about
people living in a universe contained within
a gemstone - a diamond or such
it feed into the idea of a
fractal universe
an idea that anything can be
magnified or reduced
at will and will function
normally
and so we have a concept of
pictures of
virus particles
taken from electron microscope pictures, we assume
and coloured in, rather as in Victorian Post Cards
and the unspoken assumption that these are
tiny, tiny little space ships
with human like
crew
at this point we want to step away from this line of thought
and consider
squirrels
but first
we want to point out that
everything of plant origin that imparts
flavour
to food
is derived from chemicals produced by plants to
protect them from being
eaten
and the squirrels?
despite the fact that in the UK
where there are now
American grey squirrels
it is WRONGLY assumed that there were previously
British Red Squirrels
there is this idea
which may be true
that just as herbs carry chemicals that
try to kill green fly and
make tomatoes taste interesting to humans
red squirrels harbour a
squirrel pox virus
that does them no harm and
kills grey squirrels
people sometimes ask
why are some animals in Australia so
over the top venomous?
it's because the venom is 'designed' to kill
non-human prey that has a massive tolerance to
the toxin in the venom
nothing to do with people - at all
people collateral damage in an
arms race
between
the spider and the fly
viruses are somewhere between
toxic chemicals
and
bacteria and fungi
for themselves
they simply
ARE
just like
strychnine
simply
IS
they have no plans
no command and control
and they happen to
at a very primitive level have
a nature that is best seen as somehow a combination of
a toxin such as lead or mercury
and a enzyme such as
insulin
that would be wrong
a virus is an elaborate for of enzyme
not between but beyond
there are examples of
re-inventing the wheel
in the evolution life on earth
but they are rare
and so - for instance - many many species will
have, make use of, the same enzymes
a bit like Windows and Apple computers
using the same electricity
and machine code conventions
but different interfaces with the
wetware
and so a virus can be seen as a
freelance enzyme
and to that extent
a mitochondrion
is a structure within a class that includes viruses
the term for this may be organelle
we unconsciously put mitochondria to work for us
we can consciously put viruses to world for us
delivering gene therapy
and perhaps sub-consciously
like the story of the
grey squirrels 'using' squirrel pox virus
against red squirrels
it is very strange to the 'expert'
that people - philosophical vegans for instance
see animals as
sentient - having feelings hopes and aspiration
don't attribute these to
plants
so we are free to eat them
but do attribute them to
viruses
and so to
foraging
we all know that
you have to be an expert to
go
gathering the mushrooms
some people - particularly in the Uk
half a century ago
were quite keen in
living dangerously in this sphere
a vogue for eating
magic mushrooms
quite, but not always fatally, psycho-active, toxic
and so to the latest
toxic wild foods problem in China
the trendy leftist will have immediately assumed
people in China choosing toxic foods
out of desperation in the face of
grinding poverty
it now appears that the problem stems from a
trade similar to ivory
in
pangolin scales
something consumed because it is
rare, endangered, and EXPENSIVE
not
scavenged from a rubbish tip
and we return to the concept of
people who are too
dumb
to get into
conventional, science based, medical school training
settling for qualifications in
traditional medicine
like our own
Charlie Boy
and his
homeopathy
speaking of
Prince Charles
he must be very gratified to know that
institutions such as
The 'University' of Sunderland
and now creating
Bare Foot Doctors
to provide health care
outside the
M25
the M25 is the motorway ring road around
Greater London
there are a couple of useful comments on the above
it may help to counteract
anthropomorphisation
regarding a people
of viruses
if we adopt the early terminology
virus particle
and secondly
humans
adapt to viruses that are new to them
this is sometimes described as
developing immunity
we have the concept that
red squirrels are susceptible to
squirrel pox
but what research has been done on the question
can red squirrels develop immunity to squirrel pox
is there something fundamental that is preventing that
or are greys just taking advantage whilst
the reds are feeling a bit
snuffley
and would we have
a winter this year
and would we have winter snuffles
if the media
still had
BrExit
?