It seems that it is time to celebrate, whether or not the Huhne person is found guilty of perverting the course of justice or not. He is a dead parrot as far as his ministry of climate change is concerned. The question remains though, will his departure herald a new awareness of practical and sensible policies in respect of the energy crisis, he and his ilk have created. Or will it be carry on straight ahead, the road is clear, lets legislate the country back to the sixteenth century, with the damaging and ludicrous and so called, but not at all renewable, green environmental policies!

For example it does not take long to discover that the cost of producing a mega wind farm in energy terms, and this is using hydrocarbons for the energy supply, is greater than the sum total of energy produced over the lifetime [20 years] of the device. If the construction cost was based on the power from a wind turbine, as the prime source of energy for the component manufacture, neither would it ever be built, as the supply of energy would be so intermittent as to render progress virtually impossible. Imagine waiting for the concrete to arrive in the wind powered truck… sorry its gone off, do you want a piece of modern sculpture, here where it stopped!

The facts are irrefutable, you cannot generate electricity in a timely and reliable manner by an ancient concept such as a windmill, no matter how much twentieth century technology you bolt on to it. Today as I write this post, there is and has been no wind for many hours, and the temperature has at no time risen above freezing in the last twelve hours. Equally there is no suitable technology to store the electrical energy from a wind farm for later use, no not even pumped storage, which, given the small geographical size and population density of the UK is a diabolical idea.

There are of course other technologies which could be a twenty-first century solution to the energy crisis, one of these, which I believe to be a great innovation is hydrogen fuel. Strangely, but for how long? we do have a potential champion in this area, and no I do not have shares in the company… Check out Cella Energy the Shell Springboard overall UK winner 2011.

Sent from my iPad!

I have 958 photographs (as of todays date) on Flickr and I also have 2,381 views. But on looking at my pages I note that the stats are wildly adrift, on one page alone of pictures of the cellar at Parlington for example I have over 3,000 views! So what’s going on is this something to do with the sad situation of Yahoo… can’t they find the right people anymore to do justice to the sites they operate. It’s not that long since they threw in the towel on MyBlogLog, which was quite good at determining the users on a web site.

Following recent trimming of the roadside hedges, scrub and trees, the old cross which is believed to date back to medieval times, is quite prominent on the roadside, on the left as you progress from Tadcaster on Toulston Lane towards Bramham. It really is great to see something like this, without too much in the way of vandalism afflicting it, just some fairly light scratchings from some people keen to leave their initials for no-one to wonder who they were!

The cross is listed and the following is the listing reference:

BRAMHAM CUM OGLETHORPE YORK LANE
SE44SW
Remains of cross at SE443426
Grade II

Remains of cross. Probably late medieval. Magnesian limestone. Base approx.
1 metre square and 1/2 metre high, the upper part brought to an octagon by broad
chamfers, the remaining corners of the lower part raised as if for finials or
short pinnacles. In the centre of the base, a stump of the shaft, octagonal,
with chamfer stops at the bottom of the diagonal sides.

No, wait, stand back for a moment and reflect on it all… “Single Currency”, “Eurozone in Crisis”, “Fishing Quotas”, “Common Agriculture Policy”… etc., etc., daily we are subjected to rhetoric on these and other topics from the MSM and our politicians, some positive, mostly negative as far as the UK is concerned.

From this position of observer, looking at the issue; lets take an analogy of this daily occurrence.

Say I am running an SME, a family concern which I hope to pass on to my children and they to their children, Isn’t that one of the best ways of developing the wealth of the country as a whole? Well imagine if by some tragic accident I lost the sight in my right eye and some time later had my arm amputated. Never mind I battle on, as did someone else in the late eighteenth century. Sadly no… worse is yet to come, despite these handicaps the phone rings every fifteen minutes requiring me to consider this new piece of legislation or that. From my one eyed, one armed, and limited mobility perspective I can’t cope with all this extra stuff! It’s hard enough without it.

Now I am not here knocking people with handicaps, I am simply saying that we are handicapping ourselves in business and trade because we are not focusing on what we need to. My fictitious family businessman is handicapped by our own politicians, for one reason or another (these are my disabilities in my analogy), however he can make do, but we have joined a club where we have another and more burdensome tier of regulation above our own, that we have not voted for, nor are able to object in a proper democratic sense.

The worst of it is that our attention on managing our own business is so severely distracted that it will fail, due to the ever increasing, overarching burden of simply managing the EU load. Let’s consider that we do not have to address the fishing quotas and the diminishing fish stocks, we would be paying full attention to our own fishermen and maintaining the huge abundance of fish, many of which we would be exporting! It is simply obvious that only by allowing our territorial waters to be plundered by all and sundry we have a double edged problem, redundant fishermen and no fish!

Why have we allowed this to happen? Are we to be forever ruined all because a failed and virtually useless sailor/politician signed our heritage away, as he lied, grinning, with his shoulders wobbling in a manic chuckle! Never forget he also brought us the three day week.

Anyway my proposition is simple. We have enough to deal with in the UK, adding to the pot with an external overbearing zealous EU simply adds further weight upon our collective shoulders. What staggers me the most is our almost total lack of self confidence as a country, why do we think we cannot make it alone, we have in the past, we need fear nothing, our competences are as good and if not better than most. We just appear, or some of our fellow travellers, to have lost our nerve!

So leave the EU, get on with our own agenda, do not reflect on the 3 million jobs, that by some smoke and mirrors are deemed dependent on our continued membership of the club, I don’t think so. Our membership fee is totally outrageous, reported at £6,400,000,000.00 [£6.4Billion] per year net out. If all 3 million were made redundant overnight we could afford to give each one over £2,000.00 per year to assist them in finding a new job!

Returning to the picture at the head of this article, is the man, or as some say, “the Boy”, who I doubt has the “necessary” to do the right thing for us, he is a marketing man! He is no “British Bulldog”. He will not bring home the bacon, unless it is Danish; he is afraid, too many diplomats and career civil servants will ensure that we keep the status quo. I’ve seen bigger balls on an ant!

Remember if the polls are correct and a majority in the country want out, if we all sent a letter telling the PM and his ministers, along with our own MP’s this simple fact… he would have to do something, if not withdraw, then resign and give us a referendum at least. Because we shure never signed up to what we got – Common Market – my **se!

Finally but not least, Sir Thomas Gascoigne [The family who resided at Parlington] was also very disenchanted with the Prime Minister in his day… Lord North, and we lost the Americas [USA chunk], so lets not compound our mistakes, recall the Englishmen who wrote the American Constitution and this statement from it. “and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity!” We must demand the same, liberty!

Wounded Soldiers from Lotherton Hospital at Parlington, 1915

The Gascoigne family in the second half of nineteenth century, were like many prominent families of the day, heavily involved in the military and unsurprisingly the young, “Dick” Gascoigne, only son of Frederick and Isabella was introduced to military life early on as a cadet. As the juvenile Captain of the cadets in 1863 aged only 12 he was given high praise by the ladies watching a sham fight organised for the Second West York (Leeds) Volunteers at Parlington. But this paled into insignificance compared to his later exploits in the Sudan war, 1854-55, as he and others attempted to rescue General Gordon. My new talk, “Parlington and the Military”, was tested out on the Barwick in Elmet Historical Society on Wednesday evening. Although I say it myself, it was well received, and the feedback I have had since tells me it is worth adding the talk to my regular portfolio!

There are a few places on the Parlington history site to view details of the Military involvement.
Here in the Clippings Section.
Here in the Family Section.
Here in the Family Section about WW2

Garforth, on the east of Leeds, has grown considerably in the post WW2 period and has had for many years a vibrant Historical Society. I was first introduced to the society by the former secretary Ron Sudderdean. Over the last few years I have given talks about Parlington on at least three occasions, each time offering new discoveries. Well today whilst looking at my site stats on Google Webmasters Tools I discovered that a link to the Parlington History Site was coming from Garforth Historical Society this is a new venture for them I’m sure, I hope they can publish much of their collection in time, meanwhile drop by and view the site, don’t forget to bookmark it!

So a small Tidbit is the flavour of this post and it has to do with installing a light fitting, in my new office. You may have encountered the problem I am about to set out, or you may have paid someone else to sort it out, whatever. Lights which are installed in the ceiling have one of two wiring types, usually; firstly there is the behind the scenes, in the floor/ceiling void junction box from which the live-neutral and sometimes earth protrude to be attached to the light fitting! If you find this then adding a new fitment is pretty easy. Of course most of the business end of the circuit is contained in the junction box, which will obviously include a live feed to the switch or switches, but unless the house is in need of re-wiring you can simply ignore what has been installed in the ceiling void.

Moving on to the second type, which I believe to be pretty common, and I always seem to come up against these beasts, is the loop in ceiling rose! Here all the wiring is terminated inside the plastic ceiling fitment, Live (loop-in Loop-out), neutral ditto, earth ditto, live to switch/switches, live back from switch, and neutral to light fitting! This seems a simple way of handling the circuitry, alas rarely do modern light fittings, probably because the bulk are imported, seem to recognise this and simply offer a plastic terminal block, for live, neutral and usually an earth. I have attempted on occasion to remedy the problem by using a larger terminal block to accommodate all the wires, but the odds of the light fitting housing/rose facilitating this is virtually nil! Plus, it strikes me as a poor solution to the problem, given the potential risk with electrical fittings.

Getting to the point of this message, I discovered a fairly new British designed and made invention, the Wagobox Light, by Connexbox. Here an inventive electrician has recognised the frustrations of making electrical connections and has developed this simple enclosure which is designed to utilise within it the wiring, and the yet more devilishly cunning German developed Wago connectors; put the two together and… Wham Bang than you Mam, job done! Slide the Wagobox into the ceiling void, all nice and secure, you may have to cut a small hole to ease the box through, but it really is a simple solution to a messy problem. I wholeheartedly recommend using them.

Bye the way the legal position on working with electrical circuits has in recent years been savaged by the Bureaucrats, so do take care to keep within the law, should you seek to replace a light fitting. The details I have described here come within part P of the Building Regulations, replacing a light fitting does not require notification. To my mind, as with much legislation, the motives are quite laudable but as ever the effect is to increase the cost and do little for safety. The fact that you are permitted to do what I have described without notifying Building Control, yet you are not allowed to install a new external water resistant socket in a shed, says a lot about our “elf an safety” society.

Reality Distortion Field!

That’s what they used to say about your vision, you got the last laugh… arguably the most innovative company ever! and now possibly the world’s largest, some achievement Steve!