Machpoint005
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Posts posted by Machpoint005
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Meanwhile back on topic, that's really good news from Venice. It doesn't look as if any vaporetti (my favourite mode of water transport, in my second favourite city in the world) were speeding.
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19 hours ago, Ogwr said:
Ah the days before PubCo?s when the breweries had tenanted houses, then the Brussels Mafia decided that competition rules meant the brewers sold of their tied estates to the PubCo?s ! Retaining sites fpr Harvesyer, Beefeaters etc. and the megabreweries could churn out foreign lagers.
It wasn't the EU, it was Thatcher.
2 hours ago, Tonka said:But wasn't Southampton in the Strong country
When I lived in Southampton (in the 1970s) there were dozens of former Strongs pubs (Titbread Whankard from one end to the other) but in some of them you could get "Trophy", which was Strong's bitter. Move along the coast towards Pompey and the "Trophy" was brewed in the former Brickwoods brewery. There was also Brickwoods Best Bitter, later rebranded as Pompey Royal.
I never objected to all the Marstons houses back then (the result of Marston, Thompson and Evershed's takeover of the Winchester brewery in the 1920s) because you clould get proper draught Burton Bitter in many of them, and Pedigree in a select few (including my local).Then we moved to the Manchester area, which was never a beer desert.
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The thing that always strikes me about Canada geese is that they seem so slow and stupid compared with mallards or black-headed gulls
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On 03/08/2025 at 09:47, dogless said:
But what's the point of saving them if they're not used regularly and sufficiently to be a viable business ?
Rather like the high street these days ... we all bemoan the loss of independent small retail outlets, whilst shopping on line and buying meat and fish from the supermarkets.
We, the customer, are ultimately responsible aren't we ?
Rog
In my adult lifetime (1973 to date) the country has lost half its pubs: in round figures, and from memory, 78,000 has become 35,000.
Pubgoing is no longer endemic. Supermarket beers, property prices and greedy landlords (including pubco landlords) were primarily responsible.
The big multinational brewers have invested heavily in tasteless lagerade with fancy foreign names, nearly all of which bears no resemblance to the original product, and is brewed in giant UK chemical plants. Those of us who enjoy proper beer are fewer and fewer in number, because that lagerade is equally characterless from keg, bottle or can.
Proper draught beer has a flavour that cannot be reproduced in small-pack, although some do get quite close (quick plug for Marble Beers there).
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Since it is a river navigation, the whole length has been canalised even if no work has actually been done on the relevant 25-metre (or whatever it is) stretch.
Oh, and I think the OP should probably look riparian up in a dictionary.
It's from ripa, the Latin for a river bank.
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57 minutes ago, dmr said:
and so have adopted an "its all routine and can't go wrong" attitude?
I came across exactly that attitude from the Safety Officer on an offshore oil production platform, in May 1988. Why do I remember the date?
The platform was Piper Alpha.
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1 minute ago, Lily Rose said:
to determine what type of water the boat is floating in
Usually the wet sort, unless you're on the Peak Forest Canal ...
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Can you still get those little 3-pin plugs and sockets s typically used on caravans? We had a boat with such sockets, and put the matching plugs on appliances eg TV, DAB radio, DVD player.
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13 minutes ago, MtB said:
Missing my point by a country mile.
Work it out...
1 hour ago, MtB said:But there IS a difference. The H&S regs are needed because otherwise people at work are (used to be?) instructed to carry out dangerous tasks/practices as part of their employment.
You seem to have been suggesting that this is the only reason why H&S@W regulations are needed.
It isn't.
They are also there to protect employees (including unpaid employees, ie volunteers) from themselves.
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1 hour ago, MtB said:
But there IS a difference. The H&S regs are needed because otherwise people at work are (used to be?) instructed to carry out dangerous tasks/practises as part of their employment.
Volunteers restoring canals, interfering with boaters going through locks, or whatever, are their own bosses.
"My husband was killed/injured in an accident volunteering, restoring a canal" isn't quite the same, somehow.
It is the same thing.
If a volunteer had a fatal accident, there would be an underlying cause, such as lack of training or the correct equipment. No volunteer is their own boss. Somebody has to tell a them what to do, or what not to do. Work it out...
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18 hours ago, MtB said:
Although sometimes I wonder if anything much would change, were their funding to be doubled.
It would be nice to have the opportunity to find out!
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On 08/07/2025 at 14:47, NB Saturn said:
Yes, thats the one - it is expensive for what it does, but the £400 disappeared in the overall scheme of things ☹️
Expensive toys are ... expensive. Whoda thunkit?
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On 03/07/2025 at 14:57, Mike Todd said:
People were generally shorter and smaller back then depending on diet.
If you study old seating plans for parish churches with pews you will soon discover the differences between then and now
Or you could visit an unmodernised church to see for yourself.
Redundant, decommissioned, disenfranchised, decommissioned, deconsecrated (take your pick from those adjectives) churches are best.
There's a brilliant example in Macclesfield, complete with box pews.
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9 minutes ago, Gybe Ho said:
@GUMPY's post was nothing more than vulgar attention seeking, he was prepared to trample on the misfortune of others who have collided with the awful pontoon in pursuit of personal vanity. Quite disgusting behavior, but routine for this forum.
I get emails from people, supporting my challenges of this forum's acerbic culture.
Do I deduce from your dislike of forthright comments that you do not hail from the northern (or the extreme western) parts of this realm?
Gumpy was, intentionally or unintentionally, reiterating a comment I made yesterday, to the effect that boaters should act like Boy Scouts.
(Yes, I'm just old enough to have been a Boy Scout, renamed Scout, in my teens). The motto stayed the same, though.
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Don’t sensible narrowboaters take any trouble to 'Be Prepared" before venturing onto the Thames?
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I wouldn’t thrust 'em ...
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It amazes me just how readily the general case is applied to the particular by People Who Should Know Better.
And vice versa.
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The Civil Service writes stuff (or re-writes technical stuff by People Who Know) so as to avoid loopholes. Mostly they successfully prevent know-alls from doing stupid things
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24 minutes ago, nb Innisfree said:
I've never repacked while afloat but if I did I would first wrap lots of clingfilm around the shaft via the weed hatch to stop water ingress.
I've never thought of that. What a good idea!
(Does it work?)
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And your second.
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3 hours ago, Rob-M said:
I usually work on about 1.25l per engine hour.
That sounds about right for a Beta 43 too.
Doesn't matter whether you do 2.5 or 3.5 miles in that hour: the engine still runs when locking through a flight.
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2 hours ago, 5239 said:
ha yes,picture I found on Internet,
but yeah it ought to come with chocolate sprinkles
Nah, but d'you want a Flake wi' that?
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On 17/06/2025 at 16:50, 1st ade said:
I thought the deal was we would go metric if they (particularly the French) adopted Greenwich Mean Time...
I'm surprised they didn't take the opportunity of Brexit to switch to Paris Mean Time (A La "The Gulf of America")
Beer or Ale is one area where (to me) Imperial still rules - "a pint" is about right; "a litre" is way too much and 500ml leaves me feeling short-changed...
But the over-precise conversion annoys even more - I remember as a kid building small radios and being told to buy "a ferrite rod approximately 152.4 mm in length by 6.35 mm diameter"
The pint is defined as 568 millilitres.
Your complaint about beer in litres is straight from Orwell's 1984.
When you buy a "pint" in a pub, you won't get 568ml of liquid. It'll probably be something between 520 and 540ml if it has a proper head on it.
If it doesn't have a head, why would you want to sup slaip ale?
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21 hours ago, Jerra said:
A pound force is around 4and a half times a Newton.
I remember pounds force, poundals, Btu and even slugs.
Fortunately, I never had to use them because my secondary and tertiary education was all in SI units.
I always cook in grams and millilitres too.
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What's in a name?
in New to Boating?
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My Grandad ordered a new car in Black Tulip after his retirement from the motor trade. When a purple Austin 1300 arrived at the showroom, my Grandma flatly refused to get accept it.
They drove away in the red one sitting next to it.