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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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I started watching it anyway and found the book publishing stuff quite interesting. It's obviously a dog's life being a successful writer, I'm well out of that. But it was the Guernsey scenes I was more interested in. It started well, a reasonable reproduction of Weymouth docks with a fairly authentic looking Stothart & Pitt crane (I used to collect crane numbers) and even Guernsey harbour being a beach could be excused because it took them a long time to clear St Peter Port. But the island itself was a bit unfamiliar.

One of the handy things about shooting a film set there in the 1940's is that nothing has changed in the 2010's. So it came as a shock to find it was more of a Hebridean Island where aurochs outnumber people. Since Guernsey actually has 2000 people to the square mile, rather more than downtown Bangladesh, I found this unrealistic. I will watch on, stilettos at the ready.
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
It started well, a reasonable reproduction of Weymouth docks with a fairly authentic looking Stothart & Pitt crane (I used to collect crane numbers).


How serendipitous. Part of my "Lockdown Planning" included contingency for Extreme Boredom Situations. It was a bit of an extreme and wishful contingency, as M'Lady's To-Do List spontaneously expands, regardless of how many things I manage to cross-off. But I digress.

Part of my planned remedy for Extreme Boredom was to start assembling the model railway kits I bought for #1 Son, many years ago, well before he became a grunting teenager. One of which is a Dapol Model Railway Dockside Crane Plastic Kit.

Was the Weymouth crane like this?
https://www.dapol.co.uk/c030-travelling-dock-side-crane-563

It was £2.95 when I bought it for my son, now the RRP is £9, one of the very few things I've ever bought that has appreciated in value. If you have any advice on appropriate colours and/or numbers, please let me know.

Sad about Stothart & Pitt though.

The firm was sold to Robert Maxwell's Hollis Group in 1986. Following the collapse of Maxwell's empire a management buy out was undertaken in 1988. But this failed and the company closed in 1989, resulting in all the works shutting down.
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Mick Harper
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I don't deal with hobbyists. Appropriate colour. A colour? On a crane? Stick to leggo, sonny.
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
I don't deal with hobbyists.


Methinks he does protest too much. Did you get banned from the Weymouth Crane Spotters Club?

Talking of Maxwell (the Bouncing Czech), a joke from the Czech Internet.

“Not allowed to travel. Police breaking up public gatherings. Empty shelves in shops. Have to queue for everything. I wonder why my parents keep acting like they’ve seen it all before?”
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Wile E. Coyote


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We caught an old episode of Spooks, it was terribly dated, lone scientific nutter has created a virus which could create a pandemic. Danny was having a crisis of confidence, about whether he should assassinate him.

This plot didn't ring true with the Wiley family. "Just butcher the crank, Danny." "What a wuss, just eliminate the bastard." Bash the boffin's head in." "Inject him with anti-freeze."

At the end we went out and clapped for the NHS......coz we are nice.
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Boreades


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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
We caught an old episode of Spooks, it was terribly dated, lone scientific nutter has created a virus which could create a pandemic.


I concur, it does sound dated.

How about an updated version? Where a mutated coronavirus is taken from bats in Australia to a Chinese military research lab, and then accidentally released by someone on their way to the local wet food market.

It's a work of fiction of course.
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Mick Harper
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Reilly, Ace of Spies (Moving Pictures)

Stalin is often portrayed as a successful monster. The most recent episode illustrated this was not the case, he was a successful bureaucrat. When Felix Djerzinski, head of the Cheka, told him they were operating with great success 'The Trust', an apparently shadow Russian government supported by the moneybags in the west, but actually answering to the Cheka, Stalin pointed out to him that shadow governments supported by western moneybags could easily become not-the-shadow government, and ordered the operation closed..

When Djerzinki protested there was no chance of that since it was completely controlled by the Cheka, Stalin pointed out that actually it was completely controlled by Felix Djerzinksi, which was an even better reason for closing it down.

It should be added that Stalin sent a whole bunch of people west during the war to infiltrate the German-occupied areas of Europe. When, after the war, he (quite wisely, if monstrously) decided to liquidate anybody who had witnessed the superiority of life in the west, he included those he had himself sent west. "What diff?" he pointed out.
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Mick Harper
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Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away (5 Star)

Fabulous new wrinkle today. A little close of houses, everyone paying their rent, lived there for years, everyone's got little kiddies etc etc. They're all evicted and have to go off to the council for emergency re-housing.

Why are they being evicted? Because the landlord has discovered he can make more money renting to the council so they can house people in need of emergency re-housing.
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Mick Harper
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The Crusades: An Arab Perspective (Al-Jazeera)

There ought not be any perspective on a historical event but it is certainly eye-opening listening to Arab historians talking about the Crusades. They're apoplectic! If they are like this about something that happened a thousand years ago I don't give Arab students much of a chance of any kind of straight education. This is a different scale from our own academics.
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
There ought not be any perspective on a historical event but it is certainly eye-opening listening to Arab historians talking about the Crusades. They're apoplectic! If they are like this about something that happened a thousand years ago I don't give Arab students much of a chance of any kind of straight education. This is a different scale from our own academics.


Probably reinforced in recent years by:
(a) Islamic view that NATO operations are still Crusaders -v- Muslims
(b) NATO self-identifying as Crusaders
http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/lbc/index.php/segment/0114000444001
(c) several key/senior members of NATO HQ belonging to still-active Knights Templar lodges
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Mick Harper
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If historians can't get over these fripperies they ought not to be historians. I see you haven't mentioned anything bad the Arab side have been up to. Is that you or them?
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Mick Harper
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Where Did It Come From? (History H2 Channel)

This is a completely brill series for those of us with a technological bent. Theoretical and historical, you understand, on my part. It has convinced me that practically everything comes from China. But what is weird is that

1) it is not secret technology for the most part, just simple stuff like seed drills
2) these weren't taken up in the West even though they must have been known about and improve productivity staggeringly
3) they didn't lead to take-off in China, that had to wait until centuries after...
4) the west suddenly decided to take them up c 1700 presumably when we made direct contact.

Oh and one other thing: the reason that China made such inroads and we didn't was because they had bamboo and we didn't.
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Mick Harper
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Lambretta (Talking Pictures)

This Italian doc was explaining in exultant tones how wonderfully liberating the scooter was for young Italian women in the sixties as it allowed them to escape the 'vigilant gaze of their parents' perched on the back of their boyfriend's scooter. Up to a point. They still had to ride side-saddle.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
The Crusades: An Arab Perspective (Al-Jazeera).

According to the historian Daniel Pipes, the Arab World had not even heard of the crusades until the end of World War One---when they learned about them in British Schools.

I was astounded to read this because it bolstered my conviction that the crusades never happened.
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Mick Harper
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The one thing that nobody ever points out is that it was the Muslims that won the Crusades! When listening to these modern Muslim savants it is completely obvious that they are replaying the post-1918 situation when the 'Christians' carved them up and, while they have technically got rid of their Christian overlords, they are still living by overwhelmingly Christian norms.

The Japanese, Koreans and the Chinese (and even for the most part, Indians, Indonesians etc) have had the good sense to accept that 'Christian norms' have passed the test of time, so they have adopted them and then moved on. Not as yet very far but no doubt they will.
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