On May 21, 12:27�pm, Robatoy wrote:
On May 21, 3:37 am, Lew Hodgett wrote:

Robatoy wrote:

* So steeped in history. What a wonderful place. Warm beer...hey..Lucas
* fridges, right?

Lucas as in "The Prince Of Darkness"?

Lew

LOL.
I could never figure out why British cars from the 50'and 60's
wouldn't start when it rained....coming FROM a country where it almost
always rains. (Last year, summer was on a Tuesday?)
One day, as four Merlin engines (on a Lancaster) gurgled to a start, I
almost peed my shorts with glee. Those Brits can do some cool
engineering.

Now that brings back long ago memories. During college, a friend had
an MG---TD if memory serves. I helped him change the clutch one day,
so he loaned me the car for the next weekend. I drove down to see my
mother and my girlfriend, not in that order. It was an adventure. Only
about 125 miles, from Albany, NY south, but it rained at a moderate
pace the entire trip. The wiper motor--single motor--quit after 30
minutes or so, and the top leaked around the edges, the front and the
seams.

It was also made for shorter guys--my buddy was about 5' 9" and I am,
or was then, 6'2".

Swiping the water off the inside of the windshield with one hand,
while swinging the wiper blade through part of its arc with the other,
after disconnecting the motor and Rube Goldberging a bit, I
occasionally managed to steer and was almighty glad the roads were
nearly empty.

Other Brit vehicle adventures, all sponsored by Lucas, included the
lightless Norton Manx...it was a delight, and the light worked
beautifully, until you leaned it into a tight, blind curve. Or the
Jag...ah well. It was fun, even the screwball Austin-Healey.

B A R R Y wrote:
Robatoy wrote:

Canada here standing on guard for thee

Truly one of the most beautiful national anthems. ;^)
scouser here from liverpool (wood is so expensive in the uk you would
think it came from trees )
and yes i drank in the same pubs as the four lads.

just me

Charlie Self writes:

It was also made for shorter guys--my buddy was about 5' 9" and I am,
or was then, 6'2".

Lemme guess. The rain caused you to shrink...

On Mon, 21 May 2007 11:20:58 GMT, B A R R Y
wrote:

John B wrote:

It does get a little frustrating tho, when you mention an Aussie Co such
as Bunnings and get no response and when Home depot is mentioned the
flood gates open.

What's Bunnings?

The nearest thing to HD


I plan to visit Oz and New Zealand one day, but I know there's far too
many beautiful things to see to be shopping for tools. G

There's always time for tools

Barry

In article . com,
says...

Other Brit vehicle adventures, all sponsored by Lucas, included the
lightless Norton Manx...it was a delight, and the light worked
beautifully, until you leaned it into a tight, blind curve. Or the
Jag...ah well. It was fun, even the screwball Austin-Healey.


Oh Gods, Lucas. I rewired my Landrover once upon a time, I could not believe
what I found that passed for a 'loom'. Pile of melted slag, more like. Little
wonder none of the fuses seemed to do anything useful. The Morris Minor we had
for a while was no better. I've avoided Lucas by driving continental cars since
;-)

-P.

--
=========================================
firstname dot lastname at gmail fullstop com

Since you are in the UK, what is the skinny on the Cutty Sark?

Lew

On May 21, 7:12 pm, Peter Huebner wrote:
The Morris Minor we had
for a while was no better. I've avoided Lucas by driving continental cars since

IIRC, there was a rash of positve ground 6-volt Minors as well.

The firm, where my dad was an accountant, bought a VandenPlas 'R' as
their limo for their high-end clients. I was always excited when my
dad got to take it on a family trips. We got quite the treatment
whenever we pulled in for a fill-up.
I thought he was going to have a coronary one time when my sister and
I were in the back-seat munching on candy.
I also recall it being replaced with a Citroen because the damned
thing was always having electrical problems. Windows, wipers.. that
sort of stuff.

On May 21, 10:04 pm, Lew Hodgett wrote:
Since you are in the UK, what is the skinny on the Cutty Sark?

Lew

I almost got sick to my stomach when this showed up in my mailbox:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/6675381.stm

On May 21, 1:51 am, Robatoy wrote:
Yup.. you missed something. You did before. I'm not evil. I am what you see. Now sit down and pour yourself a single malt, you dick! (That's the affectionate 'dick')

Be fair, now. I did mention the fact that I thought I might have
missed something. Gave ya the benefit of a doubt right off the bat.

What's happening to you guys down there, Robert? I mean, really? Are you trying to tell me that you would take exception to my saying: "Dude!!", "lemme pour a fine scotch down that ugly face of yours!"

Well, down here we have the most hypocritical swamp of **** you can
imagine that passes for freedom of speech. Think Don Imus, that lost
his career. Think the two major market DJs that just got fired for
their prank call to a Chinese restaurant order "slimp flied lice"
while on the air.
Think of the Cinncinatti orchestra firing Wopat and Schneider from
opening the new orchestral season as they have for the last ten
years. Why? Because about 25 years ago they drove a car in a TV show
(the General Lee) that had a Confederate flag on it. The NAACP
advised against it this year as being insensitive.

People of color or the correct sex have carte blanche, and can pretty
much say or do what they want. To paraphrase Carlos Mencia: "Hey,
you white folks think you have freedom of speech? Do you really?
Then try this: got to work and tell my jokes to your coworkers and see
how long you have a job".

Back in the 90s, I was forced to go to sensitivity training seminar.
What did I get from it? Just this: White males are just wrong.

I have attended several business seminars that teach how to manage and
train employees. We spent as much time on learning how not to offend
them as we did anything else. We learned how you inflict pain akin to
a beating by making insensitive remarks. We REALLY learned how
remarks can be taken out of context and used for benefit later.

Something gets lost in this medium.

When I said to a waitress the other day; "You must have some special
harness to keep those boobies in line.".. I got a giggle...not a ****ing lawsuit.

And again, here we have Hooters being sued for allowing "comments" to
be made about the appearance of the waitresses either to them or
within earshot.

I am simply not used to seeing that kind of language in print. And I
might say that if you will take a look at this thread no one from the
US jumped in with you...
we are hammered to pieces down here about making comments about other
nations, their people, their creeds, thier religion, anyone's sexual
preferences, etc. You get the idea.

Having been to court more than a couple of times, I would be afraid
that anything I ever wrote could be used against me if it were found.
So sir, to me you are a bold rogue.

I don't speak freely in public anymore, and don't goof around with
anyone that does. When I am with my friends, we can all speak freely,
but when anyone we don't know walks up, we frequently change the
subject. When we are in a dim lit bar soaking up whiskey and T honk
music, that's another subject. All manner of things are expressed
with colorful similes and metaphors.

Maternal parentage is questioned, the qualtiy of national origin is
doubted, sexual proclivities are questioned, and other questions too
dangerous to debate in public are entertained. We often address each
other as male and female genetalia to needle and tease. (In fact, one
of my buddies is known there by his nickname "the flashlight" due to
his member's uncanny resemblance to a D cell Maglite).

In the bar, it is 1975 again. But what is said in the bar stays
there.

As one of the advisors for he Texas Workforce Commission told me, "You
need to be really careful, Robert. As a single man, a white male that
owns the whole business, you might as well have a target on your back
for unethical employees". Believe me, everything you ever said or
wrote becomes an issue at an unemployment eligibility hearing.

It's me! Rob!....keep your shirt on, already.

I know, I know. I forget you are from a foreign land. Well, at least
foreign to me. I hope you never thought I was accusing you of
anything... I wasn't.

And it is hard to think of a solid surface guy that buys $1500 sanders
as evil. Especially one that hides an inner child of the peace and
love generation. Don't deny it! You spilled the beans when revealing
your musical tastes.
I have recognized waaay too many over the past several months for you
to make case otherwise (at least to me).

And hey.. I was wrong again. Not exactly earth shattering news. But
I hope you can get a feel for what I thought I MIGHT be looking at.

We return you now to the normal programming after the end of this
boring diatribe.

Robert

Sometimes, I find the overlap on USenet amazing.

Hiya Henry (row, row, row your boat.....)

-Zz

On 22 May, 03:04, Lew Hodgett wrote:
Since you are in the UK, what is the skinny on the Cutty Sark?

Bad restoration and preservation efforts in the '50s caused immense
ongoing damage to the frames. Infighting for decades did nothing to
solve this until the whole hull was no longer structurally safe. Then
the masts were removed and replaced with lampposts. A week ago, Cutty
Sark had already become a farcical Disneyfication with increasingly
little even worth preserving. It was a faked-up box with some
interesting exhibits in

The best thing that could happen would tbe to scrap the Cutty Sark and
spend the money on other equally or more deserving maritime history
projects. It's not even a unique iron-framed tea clipper in the UK -
The City of Adelaide / Carrick has been rotting away in Scotland for
years now, in need of a budget that's less than half the Cutty Sark
already had before the fire. Now the push is to demolish and scrap the
thing completely.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6676245.stm

Of course re-directing a budget outside London isn't going to happen.
The Cutty Sark will probably be rebuilt into an even less original
boat-shaped box (avoiding that nasty wood as it's an obvious fire
hazard) and will be used to milk ignorant tourists in a progressively
more trivial "experience". The budget will be inflated, and it will
still over-run by some obscene margin. Even if it were ditched and the
allocated money freed up for some other maritime history project, the
Olympian greed of 2012 would just steal it, as they've already done to
the lottery funding.

The Birkenhead naval museum closed last year. After being the only
thing that kept Birkenhead docks from being an abandoned ghost town
for some years, yuppification and the need for a car park to serve
flat conversions in the warehouse buildings drove the museum from the
site. This also includes one of the very few WW2 U-boat survivors, the
only large Type IX oceanic U-boat. Yet this is up in the North, so it
doesn't matter.

HMS Warrior (a ship individually more significant than Cutty Sark,
from a period that's just as significant) was rebuilt in Hartlepool, a
city that desperately needs some good news and a tourist attraction.
She was then whipped away down to the already-affluent South coast by
an act of sheer piracy.

HMS Caroline (the last survivor of Jutland) is ignored in Belfast
harbour and hardly anyone knows she's even there.
http://codesmiths.com/dingbat/lj/20061101_ireland/
Nearby is the Nomadic, last (albeit smaller) survivor of the Titanic
fleet. She was rescued by local efforts, not by London's vast budgets.

The problem with the Cutty Sark is that it's in London. London can
**** money away on any rubbish (the Mandeldome, the Olympics, Wembley,
Cutty Sark) and no-one expects it to work, or to be held to account
for vast budget over-runs and dismal failure of results. Yet outside
the M25, valuable projects achieving good results and popular
attractions can't even afford their shoestring budgets.

Here in Bristol we've just lost the recently-built Wildwalk owing to a
lack of secure long-term funding for it. Also the immensely popular
Industrial Museum was forced to close against everyone's wishes,
because the council wish to redevelop the site into a worthless
"Bristol theme attraction" (a crappy "interactive" website in a
building, with no real exhibits), then hope that this fails and frees
the site up for another profitable apartment development. You could
finance both of these from the budget the Olympics spends on junkmail.

On 22 May, 03:04, Lew Hodgett wrote:
Since you are in the UK, what is the skinny on the Cutty Sark?

Bad restoration and preservation efforts in the '50s caused immense
ongoing damage to the frames. Infighting for decades did nothing to
solve this until the whole hull was no longer structurally safe. Then
the masts were removed and replaced with lampposts. A week ago, Cutty
Sark had already become a farcical Disneyfication with increasingly
little even worth preserving. It was a faked-up box with some
interesting exhibits in

The best thing that could happen would tbe to scrap the Cutty Sark and
spend the money on other equally or more deserving maritime history
projects. It's not even a unique iron-framed tea clipper in the UK -
The City of Adelaide / Carrick has been rotting away in Scotland for
years now, in need of a budget that's less than half the Cutty Sark
already had before the fire. Now the push is to demolish and scrap the
thing completely.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6676245.stm

Of course re-directing a budget outside London isn't going to happen.
The Cutty Sark will probably be rebuilt into an even less original
boat-shaped box (avoiding that nasty wood as it's an obvious fire
hazard) and will be used to milk ignorant tourists in a progressively
more trivial "experience". The budget will be inflated, and it will
still over-run by some obscene margin. Even if it were ditched and the
allocated money freed up for some other maritime history project, the
Olympian greed of 2012 would just steal it, as they've already done to
the lottery funding.

The Birkenhead naval museum closed last year. After being the only
thing that kept Birkenhead docks from being an abandoned ghost town
for some years, yuppification and the need for a car park to serve
flat conversions in the warehouse buildings drove the museum from the
site. This also includes one of the very few WW2 U-boat survivors, the
only large Type IX oceanic U-boat. Yet this is up in the North, so it
doesn't matter.

HMS Warrior (a ship individually more significant than Cutty Sark,
from a period that's just as significant) was rebuilt in Hartlepool, a
city that desperately needs some good news and a tourist attraction.
She was then whipped away down to the already-affluent South coast by
an act of sheer piracy.

HMS Caroline (the last survivor of Jutland) is ignored in Belfast
harbour and hardly anyone knows she's even there.
http://codesmiths.com/dingbat/lj/20061101_ireland/
Nearby is the Nomadic, last (albeit smaller) survivor of the Titanic
fleet. She was rescued by local efforts, not by London's vast budgets.

The problem with the Cutty Sark is that it's in London. London can
**** money away on any rubbish (the Mandeldome, the Olympics, Wembley,
Cutty Sark) and no-one expects it to work, or to be held to account
for vast budget over-runs and dismal failure of results. Yet outside
the M25, valuable projects achieving good results and popular
attractions can't even afford their shoestring budgets.

Here in Bristol we've just lost the recently-built Wildwalk owing to a
lack of secure long-term funding for it. Also the immensely popular
Industrial Museum was forced to close against everyone's wishes,
because the council wish to redevelop the site into a worthless
"Bristol theme attraction" (a crappy "interactive" website in a
building, with no real exhibits), then hope that this fails and frees
the site up for another profitable apartment development. You could
finance both of these from the budget the Olympics spends on junkmail.

Andy Dingley wrote:

On 22 May, 03:04, Lew Hodgett wrote:
Since you are in the UK, what is the skinny on the Cutty Sark?

Bad restoration and preservation efforts in the '50s caused immense
ongoing damage to the frames. Infighting for decades did nothing to
solve this until the whole hull was no longer structurally safe. Then
the masts were removed and replaced with lampposts.

LAMPOSTS!? Good Grief!! The restoration efforts of the 50s may have been bad, but I
had an enjoyable few trips to see her during the early 60s. I have a very strong
memory of wandering 'tween decks hunched over to protect my noggin - and I'm 5'6".
But Lamposts?! What a desecration. Be better to tow her out to sea and sink her.

snips

Here in Bristol we've just lost the recently-built Wildwalk owing to a

Is that pub in a cave still open? The one supposedly there since 900.

On 23 May, 05:12, Lobby Dosser
wrote:

Be better to tow her out to sea and sink her.

She'd need to float for that.


Here in Bristol we've just lost the recently-built Wildwalk owing to a

Is that pub in a cave still open? The one supposedly there since 900.

The Ostrich? More of a cave in a pub, but it's still there and they
still have the skeleton of the pirate / slave chained up in the back
of it.

It's not the oldest pub in Bristol though. We have three contenders
for that, all from the 1600s, but no-one can agree which.

Andy Dingley wrote:

snip

A week ago, Cutty
Sark had already become a farcical Disneyfication with increasingly
little even worth preserving. It was a faked-up box with some
interesting exhibits in
snip a commentary on local restoration politics

Frustrating as hell to see public funds wasted and in the process and
antiques destroyed.

Appreciate the info.

Lew

Robatoy wrote:

How can I be of service?

You guys know summat about maple, I think. Chop a couple of nice big
ones down, crate them up and send them over. Should be just about ready
to work with when they get here ...

--

Henry Law Manchester, England

Andy Dingley wrote:
projects. It's not even a unique iron-framed tea clipper in the UK -
The City of Adelaide / Carrick has been rotting away in Scotland for
years now

only large Type IX oceanic U-boat. Yet this is up in the North, so it
doesn't matter.

Andy, you were somewhat rude to me on a previous thread, and I was
somewhat rude back. Now I begin to see that we have much in common ...

--

Henry Law Manchester, England

Zz Yzx wrote:
Sometimes, I find the overlap on USenet amazing.

Hiya Henry (row, row, row your boat.....)

That you, Martin? Well, I'm sorta not surprised. Someone who follows
one kind of good stuff will probably follow others ...

--

Henry Law Manchester, England

On 25 May, 08:52, Henry Law wrote:

Andy, you were somewhat rude to me on a previous thread,

Actually I was _blunt_ to you, rather than rude, and I'm genuinely
sorry that you saw it as personal rudeness (you big soft Northern
jessie!).

If you want a jigsaw to work, you have to spend money on it. That's
just jigsaws for you.

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message

If you want a jigsaw to work, you have to spend money on it. That's
just jigsaws for you.

Kinda like women??

On May 25, 9:42 am, "Lee Michaels"
wrote:
"Andy Dingley" wrote in message

If you want a jigsaw to work, you have to spend money on it. That's
just jigsaws for you.

Kinda like women??

Not even close.
Eventually, after 'enough' money, a jigsaw will work.

On May 25, 8:48 am, Robatoy wrote:

Kinda like women??

Not even close.
Eventually, after 'enough' money, a jigsaw will work.

Shoots.... Whooosh!.... Scores!

Nothing but net.

Robert