dom

I was lucky to grow up in Wroxham with Eric Stevenson, one of the last of a long line of blacksmiths living at the bottom of my road. I suspect there's probably a fair bit of his handiwork around Wroxham and Hoveton and in surviving wooden broads boats. He also did a lot of work for churches and cathedrals, including wrought iron for Norwich Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Aside of being a proper old craftsman, he was a lovely old boy and I can remember him teaching me and my sister how to craft a proper bow and arrows on one occasion.

If anyone's travelling that way this afternoon, the A14 eastbound carriageway is currently closed at Rowley Mile near Newmarket. A car has hit a petrol pump at the services causing a fire.

States the place is dying, yet pictures a stand-alone butcher's shop and independent hardware store. In my local area, we lost most small businesses like that 10-15 years ago. As I understand it, Nicholsons is getting a Morrisons Daily store soon, so there's obviously some support for investment. I know at least one local business has also just moved into larger premises. The drug issues probably wouldn't have been so prominent in the days when Stalham had its own police station, but obviously it's far from alone losing that. There have however always been drug issues in surrounding areas, including Hoveton. I think a lot of social issues in the area can probably be traced back to the appalling standard of education provided by the high school for many years. I only went for a couple of years, thankfully moving to Broadland High for the last couple - but, when I was there, kids basically did what they wanted in some lessons and bullied some weaker teachers into allowing them to skip any sort of meaningful education. I think a lot of kids left with woeful exam results, inevitably getting stuck locally and in low salaried employment.

Cambridgecabby has suggested that a monthly payment schedule may not show up on the Toll Checker (which is down anyway), so the current situation is unclear. I think this is actually an interesting point. Elsewhere on BA's WhatDoTheyKnow freedom of information request list several questions have been asked about what ERP system the authority uses. The responses stated that they do not have an ERP. For those not familiar, an ERP is a comprehensive software suite, often referred to as a company's "single source of truth". It generally streamlines efficiency, reduces the need for staffing (often dramatically), gives ad hoc financial reporting in a few clicks and allows easy publishing of account information, etc on websites. The fact BA don't have one appears to be a massive shortcoming and suggests those in charge have a poor grasp of technology. It also suggests there may be cost savings to be had by reducing staffing, and explains why clear financial reporting can be less than forthcoming. Either way, if an owner has a payment schedule in place, queries on the toll checker probably ought to show a more appropriate response. Returning a response saying it's untolled for an owner adhering to an agreed payment schedule appears to be potentially defamatory to me?

Google demonetize videos with violent content, copyright violation or profanity. Sometimes the process is automatic, sometimes it's triggered by signals like people disliking or reporting it.

See 1st post on this page.

I know a lot about two of the individuals involved.

Do you have anything at all to substantiate that these are the same anglers? The boat owner has been charged with abusive/threatening behaviour towards BA staff recently. It's no issue to mention this, as he posted the charge sheet himself, as some sort of apparent brag. To me, the fishermen look like a couple of old boys who are unlikely to go looking for a confrontation - and, more than likely have been told to f'ing move or similar and unfortunately now put themselves at risk of similar charges. Have you honestly never got into a similar confrontation in the pub, on the road, or similar?

That's usually the case - one of the local day boat hire places was using the countdown to the close season as a marketing tactic the other day. Knowing a few fishing obsessives, it seems like the close season is akin to quitting smoking or drinking for some.

I'm surprised a couple of the locals didn't show up - especially the notorious lady or Jed Stone.

I'd absolutely stand with them in that case - shame they didn't catch that incident on video. There are significant differences in this case though.

If there was a few minutes of peaceful uncut video leading up to the event, I'd agree with you. In this case however, I have to ask whether the content has been carefully cropped to deliberately distort the view.

I wasn't aware of that. That makes the BA's toll checker highly questionable in my view. It's gone offline in the last few days. I wonder if the two points are connected?

There's clearly much more going on than just what's shown. Why is he filming in the first place? Suggests to me that there has already been a confrontation of some sort. I suspect that rather than "sorry mate, I just need to moor for 5 mins to empty my bins" the Freeman owner probably barked orders at them.

6 of 1, half a dozen of the other. The boat is untolled so technically shouldn't be there.

If you enable sound, there are regular chimes - at least on the half hour, possibly more. Not sure if it's from the cathedral (don't recall ever noticing it having a regular chime) or St.Helen's in Bishopgate. Another thing which suprised me is that they fly in the dark. One was on the ledge earlier preening itself and it was completely dark. It now seems to have gone off somewhere.

That tends to be the best approach with boats! People go on about boat meaning "Bring out another thousand", but I think it's all too often because they've bought things with rose tinted glasses. Someone rebuilt an Elysian around Ely way recently (literally every bolt and screw replaced and repainted) and was selling it for pretty sensible money, but I can't find a trace of it now, so it must have sold. There's another at Potter/Waterside on eBay with a BMC 1.5 and holding tank, but the paintwork looks a bit rough and ready.

Definitely don't buy a petrol. It's not just the hassle of lugging fuel around, but also the risks. Apart from fire and explosion, it's also associated with a lot of carbon monoxide accidents. It's a shame - Topsail had what appeared to be really nice original diesel Appleyard built Elysian recently with a holding tank, but they dropped the price and it sold not long after. NYA also sold one recently - again diesel and holding tank. There's plenty around, but you may need to be quick off the mark now heading into prime boat buying season.

Seems like it might be back now.

I suspect a lot of their code is Python, so it'll probably be a line of code indented with a tab rather than spaces, or something equally ridiculous.

Quite a few just have a sea toilet, so will have a skin fitting in the hull rather than pump-out on the deck. Given the age of a lot of them, sea toilets would have been extremely common when first built. The original models first produced at Ely probably ended up on the Great Ouse network a lot of the time, so pretty unlikely to have tanks fitted back in those days.

Can you imagine being the engineer who deployed whatever broke it and now having to sit there trying to roll things back knowing half the world is impacted

It's really frustating - I caught one sat on the edge this morning, but with its back to the camera. Every time I go back, nothing. I'm quite surprised they nest there (particularly with bells chiming), rather than somewhere like the prison with better access to Mousehold.

It appears there is, but I don't think they'd have been them. The leaves appear to be quite shiny and unusually shaped, which I'm sure I'd have remembered.

Definitely not willows. They had fairly substantial trunks and actually look a bit like oaks in some pictures. I tend to think oak wouldn't manage to stay upright on that type of land, but I think there are a couple on Horning green, so may be a possibility.