grendel

is this any easier - the right way round

if you mirror the picture you can read the registration number A217 which indicates Sally May a Belmore class owned by maycraft, which as you correctly note is the same class that Nipper belongs to.

and of course Japanese Whaling vessels

my day, another day for shopping, unfortunately, being a giesel, once the battery has provided the pre-heat there is barely enough juice left to turn the engine over, so after jumping it, it was shopping, then more shopping at halfords for a replacement battery (to be fair its been in the car since i got it 3 years ago and only used once a week for the last year). so after getting the battery it was home via a scenic detour, I can report that at Manston there were about 40 lorries queuing for covid tests, and I passed another small convoy of about 5 headed for Dover on the operation Brock route. so can happily report that there seem to be no hold ups or issues with the port of Dover that I could see. Old Battery charged up with a decent run (I was told by the man in Halfords it needed at least a one hour run to charge it up, so a one hour run it got). The battery will still get changed out for the new one once the weather cooperates, as I dont need to be let down. the new one is getting topped up as i dont know how long it has been on the shelf in halfords, but it does come with a 5 year warranty.

well 7am the snow started here, 7.45 it was raining, by the time i went to do my shopping, not a trace was left. though my car needed a jump start to get it going. after shopping i called into halfords and acquired a new battery with 5 year warranty. this will be fitted once it stops raining long enough, currently its being topped up to full charge.

whew, thank goodness i cant be described as skinny.

I seem to recall that last time I went through dover, the customs you had to clear before getting to the ferry was the french customs, and vice versa on the return, where you had the british customs check at the french end of the trip, (it was a few years ago now).

Google streetview

you can almost get to the exact viewpoint in google maps, streetview, the church tower is just visibl;e amongst the trees

of course we all have to believe what the newspapers print, i have a friend who works at customs in dover who is reporting no issues other than truckers without paperwork being turned away. newspapers will make a story to fit the pictures they have to show. i dont trust what is reported when i can pretty much look out of my window and see different

raining here, has been for days

The Press are driven, like a lot, by profit, no more no less, if it sells papers its in.

heres another interesting one called last train from Aldeburgh http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/517

it does say its from the east anglia film archive, but the nearest i could find there was this report. http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/213365 interesting hearing all the local accents anyway

a lot of content is limited to the country of origin, always has been, this is why people resort to vpn's in the country they want to receive content for, ask any ex pat in spain.

calm and neutral doesnt sell newspapers, neither does sticking to the facts, its all about sensationalism.

considering all of the motorway signs leading south into kent had been advising about the new paperwork that was going to be required, since before I stopped heading into the office daily, that must mean they have been given at least a year to prepare themselves for this transition. this at least shows a degree of planning, of course if all of the transport companies have left things to the last possible moment, its not surprising that they are having problems. with modern communications and the internet, the agencies required do not have to be at the point of embarkment any more, they can be located anywhere and still communicate and transmit paperwork where it is needed. quite rightly, trucks should have all their paperwork in order before they start their journey, a bit pointless arriving at the port without, and I would have thought the same true from before this as well. Once again I think we are seeing news outlets that were predicting doom and gloom for the channel crossings getting caught out and now clutching at any straw to explain why their predictions failed, just remember, reporting everything normal and no issues doesnt sell papers , it has to be more sensational or worse than yesterday to do that, so the news outlets have to make it so to stay in business, good news does not sell newspapers.

I think you would be surprised how well it holds together

As i see it if Marthams got it it would be a spare set of all the used parts for one (or more) of their boats, steering gear, hardware, an engine if it has one, a complete set of hardware for a boat, that might just keep one of their fleet afloat for a few more years, with original period parts, it might even provide template parts or direct replacement parts for some of the timberwork, remember they cleared out their yard a few years back, well for a few hundred pounds and a transport fee, they would have a set of donor spares. ditto anyone else restoring a wooden boat, a set of spares and maybe some useable timber for that price is cheap, thats the route acorn to arrabella went, buying a similar boat to the one they were building, just for the hardware.

why did they not eat the evidence

anything will float with enough air bags and a big enough bilge pump.

The drawback with this plan was that we hadnt anticipated every country worldwide suddenly being in the same situation at the same time, so the production facilities that we had backed upon to support us were suddenly overwhelmed by a worldwide excessive demand, in some ways its a miracle that they have stepped up production so that we are now in a position to cope. Helping doctors rather, nothing worse than trying to cope with a bunch of spectators, untutored assistants would be bad enough.

true, it would be similar in a way to the fact that everyone was issued gas masks in WW2, that had to be carried at all times, yet that was a precaution set up for the conditions in WW1, I believe very few gas attacks were actually carried out against civilians in ww2, in hindsight we could easily say, look at all that wasted production of unnecessary gas masks for every member of the population. They were prepared, but prepared for the wrong thing.

so there was an exercise, for a different (but similar )pandemic, lessons were learned, filed away and those in the positions of influence at the time moved on, now in come a new batch of administrators, who were not around at the time looking for areas to make cuts, they ask questions, why do we do this, why do we have such large reserves of that, and either they ignore those that were involved in the original operation, or those people now are in different roles, so cuts are made, on the surface perfectly reasonable ones. until one day a pandemic comes along, its not quite the same as the exercise, so there are differences, cuts have been made, staff have changed, suppliers have changed and are no longer aware of why the order levels were as they were, so we are not as prepared as we were. this could be the situation 4 years after the exercise, or 20 years after the exercise, my reasoning here is just theoretical, I doubt we will ever know what actually happened. No point in belabouring lost opportunity, its history, the tools we have to work with are those that are in our hands right now, and those tools we can make going forward. and the actions we take to stay safe.