Saturday, November 24, 2012
Thursday, July 05, 2012
Spirit in the Sky
Cameron and Osborne. Ideologically-driven small-Staters or just buffoons?
Either way the outcome's the same. LACK OF DEMAND!
That'll be the demand we need to kick start the 'explosion' of private sector jobs the country was promised by the flower pot men in numbers 10 and 11 a couple of years ago. Yes, a couple of years ago. Two years and counting and in the meantime, due specifically to the economic policies adopted by Gideon and David, public spending is up and growth is down. But still they won't tear their eyes from plan A. The 'market' will sort itself out eventually we just have to cut to the bone. You couldn't make it up could you?
And you know what? The bulk of the cuts haven't hit home yet - and that's just the ones they've already announced. Presuming of course that there are no more embarrassing u-turns.
In the meantime the front bench are doing their insidious best to demonise benefit claimants as much as they can. Along with their friends in the media those at the bottom of the food chain are categorised as 'work shy', 'feckless' and 'feral'. Ignoring the fact that the vast majority of claimants have to claim to top up the piss poor wages they receive from the self-same private sector that's going to drag us out of the mire we are in. The self-same private sector that needs subsidising by the tax payer via tax credits for its employees because it can't/won't pay a living wage. Still, that's the 'market' for you - skewed as ever towards the feral capitalists at the top of the food chain.
Are we going to have to suffer another decade like the 1930s before somebody, somewhere wakes up to the fact that Plan A isn't working and we are sacrificing a generation on the whim of a couple of multi-millionaires with all the empathy of Pol Pot.
Probably.
A few weeks ago we attended the funeral of a dear friend. Barbara went relatively quickly - 3 months from diagnosis to the End. We gave a lift to Tracy and Wallace as they had no transport. They both joined us for a drink at the wake and reminisced about the past when all of us had been more active than we are now in the Labour movement. A bitter-sweet afternoon bathed in nostalgia and regret.
Today I attended Tracy's funeral at the same crematorium. She was 48.
As we waited to enter I learnt that another lifelong friend has MS.
Don't talk to me of 'God'.
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| Cameraphone - It's Raining It's Pouring.... |
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| Cameraphone - My Trusty, Dusty Bass |
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| Cameraphone - Baffled by Tactics |
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| Cameraphone - Littlest In His Designer Sunglasses |
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Quotidian Blues
Just a few camera phone pics and a general sense of amazement that England have managed to get to the quarter finals of Euro 2012.
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| A local school with added interesting light... |
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| Bus stop |
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| Red Stripe |
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| My kids bought me a lovely Brunswick baritone uke for Father's day |
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| Just sayin...... |
Saturday, June 09, 2012
Waterfalls
A day up at Ingleton's wonderful waterfall trail. Pretty arduous though - five miles but a five miles of constantly climbing before falling back down to Ingleton village. I had forgotten my flask and sandwiches so I didn't eat until 4-o-clock. I must confess the tanks had run out for the last couple of miles........Doesn't help carrying a tripod, DSLR, rucksack and the rest either....
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| Here comes the low cloud |
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| River Twiss Hollybush Spout |
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| River Twiss Pecca Falls |
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| River Twiss Pecca Twin Falls |
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| River Twiss Swilla Glen |
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| River Twiss Swilla Glen |
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| River Twiss Swilla Glen |
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| River Twiss Thornton Force |
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Picture This
I've had plenty to say of late regarding this, that and the other, but I have tended to say it elsewhere. In the meantime I thought I'd stick some snaps up here just to keep the old blog ticking over. I've retreated to my room for the duration of the Majesty-Fest going on all around me - Spotify, guitars, keyboard and photography have kept me sane this extended Bank Holiday weekend (Gawd bless yer Ma'am). Dearest is in the garden.
I'll quietly carry on waiting for the collapse of Western civilisation and/or the end of the Coalition: whichever comes first.
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| Schindler's Lift |
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| Mancunian Clouds over the Airport |
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| It's a Hard Life #21 |
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| Underneath |
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| The Foot of the Angel of the North |
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| Baltic Flour Mills Gateshead with Added Millennium Bridge |
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| From the Baltic Flour Mill Viewing Gallery |
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| Tynemouth |
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| Tynemouth Priory with Seagull |
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
No Future
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| Curry n Chips Benidorm Feb 2012 Samsung Mobile Phone |
This coming Friday 2nd March 2012 the British Aerospace factory that I worked in for thirty-odd years will close it's doors for the last time. As they have done for years, the staff will 'bang out' each other as they leave for the very last time. 'Banging out' is banging benches with tools or desks with whatever office equipment makes a loud noise. Going out with a bang.
The end of an era.
The factory was purpose built for aircraft manufacture by AVRO and originally opened in 1939. They built Lancaster bombers here. Later they built Vulcans and Nimrods as well as civilian aircraft such as the AVRO Anson and 748. In the 1970s AVROS became part of the Hawker Siddeley group before nationalisation as British Aerospace and finally privatisation as part of BAE Systems. During the war it employed 11,000. In it's post-war heyday it employed 6,000.
On Friday the final 200ish will bid a forlorn farewell. Some have managed to get jobs at the groups other plants (all involving a hell of a lot of travelling), others have bitten the bullet and taken redundancy.
Dearest's mother worked there, my father worked there, Dearest's uncles worked there. Eldest and Youngest have worked there - Youngest is still based there but will now have to commute 60 or 70 miles each day. All around the area there are families whose working lives are intricately tied up with the place. They were good jobs too. Not McJobs but skilled jobs that paid well. Apprenticeships and great training schools. Proper career paths with plenty of opportunities to progress. All gone now though.
As well as the work there was also a vibrant and thriving social side to the place as well. We had a lovely grade II Georgian house surrounded by football and cricket pitches, bowling greens and greenery. There was a snooker and table tennis tables. A darkroom for the camera club, discos, gala days, inter-departmental competitions as well as teams that played in local leagues. Charities in the area benefitted enormously.
Local businesses also thrived. From engineering and office suppliers to shops, pubs and other services, the factory was a wealth generator.
And now, it's gone.
Sadly it's not alone. In my local area over the last twenty years we have lost a hell of a lot of skilled jobs. And I'm talking 1,000s of jobs here. Within ten miles of my house, apart from BAE Systems there was Ferrantis and Mather and Platts. Each one of them sustaining a little economic system around them. Sub contractors, newsagents, pubs......... Where I work now I can gaze out onto Salford Quays and the neighbouring Trafford Park - one of the biggest industrial estates in Europe employing 30,000 in it's prime. A shadow of it's former self now with storage facilities and a couple of distribution centres. Just a little further out is BAE Systems' Woodford factory, flight sheds and runway. Another employer of 1,000s. Now just expensive real estate waiting for a house builder to snap it up. A housing estate in a lovely part of Cheshire. Nice.
We live in a post-industrial world.
Still, it's not all bad news, Gideon and Dave have a plan for growth! Honest. In the past few years new jobs have been created in my area. We have a Mega Tesco, open 24/7, an Aldi, KFC, McDonalds, Morrisons, Lidl. All of them selling stuff to people with less and less to spend. A sustainable economic model if ever there was one.
I watched the first part of Jeremy Paxman's 'Empire' series. A promising beginning. Sumptuous photography, dramatic music and a wry presenter with a stiletto tongue (as and when required).
I'm of an age where, as a child, the Empire was still very much assumed to still exist. At primary school I can still remember the globes covered in pink. The heroes we were taught about: Dr Livingstone, General Gordon, the Missionaries spreading good old fashioned English Christianity to the poor savages of the African interior. I can't remember any mention of the Empire's involvement in the slave trade or, for that matter, the Opium Wars.
The world was a simple place as far as us kids were concerned. Great Britain was the place to be and English was the nationality. Hadn't we just won two world wars? Weren't we a mighty Empire with Industrial might? Nobody told us the Empire was on it's knees gasping for breath. All these African nations with their 'terrorist' organisations such as the Mau Mau in Kenya were quite simply 'baddies'. We were the goodies. We were always the goodies. We wouldn't indulge in war crimes. It's just not cricket old boy.
I thought Paxman got it spot on. Our arrogance was astounding - especially when we made Egypt a 'Procectorate' in order to keep the Suez Canal open. But, as Romans discovered, Empires don't last forever. A lot of those 'freedom fighters/terrorists'' had been reading Gibbon.
And that 'end of Empire' feeling is very much in my mind with the BAe closure. During the post-war years the thought that a factory of that size would ever close was unimaginable. Even during the lean years of the early 1980s when the redundancies first started, nobody could believe that this 'empire' too would one day end. Unthinkable probably until about 2004/5 when they closed down the manufacturing bays leaving just the design and spares departments. That's when you realise a tipping point has been reached. They've nibbled away at it with the vicious tenacity of the savage hordes that finally did for the Romans. The end really is nigh.
That was one of the deciding factors when I took my redundancy back in 2007. You really didn't need a crystal ball. It's sad though, very sad. I look at Littlest and think about his future........................
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| Beach Fish Benidorm Feb 2012 Samsung Mobile Phone |
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| Beach Benidorm Feb 2012 Samsung Mobile Phone |
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| Super Heroes Benidorm Feb 2012 Samsung Mobile Phone |
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Stomping Down the Avenue by Radio City
A snap from 2010. Dearest and I in NYC. The title comes from the Steely Dan number "Bad Sneakers". The 'Avenue' is obviously 5th Avenue - a few yards to the left in this snap and, well.....Radio City speaks for itself.
A gorgeous Art Deco piece of simply wonderful.
Aretha Franklin advertised on the billboard as well. Aretha - bloody - Franklin. Not Ken Dodd or Frankie Vaughan: Aretha Franklin!!!
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Waiting for a Tram
Waiting for the tram back into Manchester. This is Trafford Bar station at around 3:45 on a January afternoon.
I had been extremely lucky this day as there was chaos shortly after I arrived at work and also shortly before I set off for home.
I knew nothing of either hold ups and carried on in my unruffled way.
Met up with Dearest in Piccadilly and caught the 82 home. Picked my car up from the garage and gave the jolly mechanic £140.
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