What Did You Do Today (2017)

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

Lancashire have closed Queen St Mill and Helmshore museums. In Lancashire we have no museums dedicated to the Mills, Engineering or Mines

Roy

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

Pero,

You are echoing some of my concerns about things like the National Trust & English Heritage.

One of the reasons so many of the NT & EH buildings are so interesting are the layers & layers of modifications to the buildings, seeing how they have changed and been adapted over the years. As soon as they get into NT/EH control all the changes stop. Dead. History is now irrelevant, it'll never change. And, sometimes, some of that history is ripped out to restore the building to a certain spurious date. The only non-spurious date for it is today.

Then there is also the problem with the listing of buildings. The building is stuck at the date it was listed. My father had a farm where the house was dated as being 1598 +/-10 when listed. The external description of the listing went into incredible detail, even down to the grey roundline PVC gutters. When they became so brittle they failed, he couldn't get grey again (have you noticed, gone completely). Anyway, he needed to get listed buildings consent to change the colour. WTF?!? And it was initially refused because 'it would materially affect the character of the building'. Who are these goons?

The listing is also preventing the proper maintenance of buildings. My wife goes to a local church where it dates back to 1346. The roof was last changed in 1784, and it's probably close to 100 years overdue a complete change. Anyway, every 5 years they have an 'MOT' for the building, which requires large areas of roof to be changed. Because it's listed the replacement roof tiles (which no-one can see from the ground, only the tower) must be hand made Kent Peg tiles. £2 for each tile & £0.60p for each hand made oak peg. If they could use machine made tiles (which externally look identical) with a built in hook, the tile costs £0.30p. In the last 10 years a congregation of 50 has paid for roof repairs costing £126,000, of which £50,000 was un-necessary costs due to the demand for hand made tiles. Had that £50000 been spent on replacement roof tiles instead, the whole roof would have been replaced by now and the building would have been set up for the next 100 years. As it is, 2/3 the roof still uses fragile, 200 year old tiles which need significant repairs & replacements every 5 years.

Regards,

Richard

Edited By richardandtracy on 22/03/2017 09:15:22

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

Lancashire have closed Queen St Mill and Helmshore museums. In Lancashire we have no museums dedicated to the Mills, Engineering or Coal Mines

Roy

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

It is all ours and we propose to limit, restrict or prevent your access to the material even if it is in public ownership.

It's the same with out of copyright books but Chairman Ady has said enough for one week…

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Workbench complete and my drill out of the garage, 4 wood bolts and 2 panel pins holding it all together because most of it is mitred, I have a decent project workspace at last! (2ft x 2ft at belly button height)

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

And back onto metal things, been making a GM screwcutting thingy from scrap bits since xmas but it's unlikely to fit my Drummond so will have to redesign a more compact one for my own lathe

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Museums these days have to compete with Facebook, Youtube, Twatter, etc., so have to be dumbed down and hyped up to give kids an instant, gratifying, "experience". History of anything seems to be irrelevant

Russell.

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

I think you are all being quite unfair to the museums. Much as I regret the losses they do have to cover their operating costs, which even for free museums is all dependent on footfall. Grants depend on this just as much as if they were directly funded out of entrance tickets. Have we not seen exactly this in play with MEX. Either they mothball the collections, restrict them to research activities or they diversify to attract more visitors.

regards Martin

[RobboParticipant @robbo]

"Some 20 year old something that judging by all the piercings had fallen face first into a fishing tackle box,"

John you have made my day with this, I fell off the armchair (the welds must have failed)

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Has anyone visited the Glasgow Riverside (formerly Transport) museum lately? They have some very fine cars and bikes, but they have mounted most of them on shelves on the walls, so you can't see them in detail. Looks terribly arty-farty from a distance, but useless to anyone really interested in the exhibits. Next time I'm in the city I'll be giving the place a miss…

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Like everything these days, museums have been dumbed down because modern man seems to be suffering from attention span deficiency and can't be bothered to think or use his brain for more than a minute at a time.

Most if not all of the Science Museums in the UK have gone the same way. As a kid I remember spending hours and hours at the museums in South Kensington looking at all of the exhibits and enjoying being able to see in detail all of those wonderful exhibits and models.

Nowadays it seems that the kids have to be entertained by some pretty crappy simple push button displays or interactive stuff not even closely related to museum activities.

It's the schools job to educate, the museums job is to display our history.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

re the museums – Its probably all OUR FAULT, as we were teaching these numpty curators at university to become what they are. If they had served a proper 5 year apprenticeship in something relevant then we may have still had some exciting exhibits on display.
BobH

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

The listing is also preventing the proper maintenance of buildings. My wife goes to a local church where it dates back to 1346. The roof was last changed in 1784, and it's probably close to 100 years overdue a complete change. Anyway, every 5 years they have an 'MOT' for the building, which requires large areas of roof to be changed. Because it's listed the replacement roof tiles (which no-one can see from the ground, only the tower) must be hand made Kent Peg tiles. £2 for each tile & £0.60p for each hand made oak peg. If they could use machine made tiles (which externally look identical) with a built in hook, the tile costs £0.30p. In the last 10 years a congregation of 50 has paid for roof repairs costing £126,000, of which £50,000 was un-necessary costs due to the demand for hand made tiles. Had that £50000 been spent on replacement roof tiles instead, the whole roof would have been replaced by now and the building would have been set up for the next 100 years. As it is, 2/3 the roof still uses fragile, 200 year old tiles which need significant repairs & replacements every 5 years.

Regards,

Richard

Edited By richardandtracy on 22/03/2017 09:15:22

And when the light fingered brigade steal the lead off the roof, churches are forced to use new lead instead of practically worthless Stainless Steel, so it gets stolen again, and the merry go round continues.

[larry PhelanParticipant @larryphelan54019]

What makes you think that kids would be bothered looking at things like that or that they would even know,or even want to know what they were looking at. Unless it was covered with lights and buttons and with an earpiece plug in,they would simply pass it by.

I am reminded of something an old turner said while looking at a group of young visitors staring at a machine in the machine shop where I worked years ago. He said;

"What ever intelligeace there is in that group yonder,the machine has it "

They might as well have been looking into a bush and made no attempt to hide it.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Had a terrible accident in the car this afternoon. It veered over the the side of the road and forced me to get out and enter a nearby fish and chip shop. This kind of event has happened previously and tends to occur if I have been unable to have lunch at the normal time. Once inside, I nearly witnessed another terrible accident.

This looks like one of those H&S posters ("spot the hazards&quot. You probably can't see but the fryers on either side of where he is standing are up to temperature at 150C and 180C (!!). The smooth, greasy surface he is standing on is not designed to take 100kg of lard and…. Oh god, I give up.

The F&S were excellent, as ever. BTW, he's making changes to the menu.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

It's silly and ridiculous to whinge about curators whilst bemoaning the loss of our museums, as if somehow they are to blame. You may have noticed that scores of libraries are also closing down. Do you see a common factor emerging here? In my area, 3 out of our 4 libraries will shortly close, their buildings sold off, staff sacked, books pulped, IT equipment flogged off, community meeting rooms and reading groups closed etc.

This is the miracle of the shrinking state and lowered taxes. It also impacts community care (= hospital bed blocking), schools (our local sixth form will stop offering A levels in 2018) etc etc. It's a political choice, nothing that curators can do much about. Write to your MP or start believing another newspaper if you don't like it.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Muzzer,

I am reminded of Kenneth Williams, in "Carro On Screaming"

**LINK**

MichaelG.

.

Seriously though … I think the idiot should be reported to HSE

[Anonymous]

Posted by Muzzer on 22/03/2017 16:36:26:

Had a terrible accident in the car this afternoon. It veered over the the side of the road and forced me to get out and enter a nearby fish and chip shop. This kind of event has happened previously and tends to occur if I have been unable to have lunch at the normal time.

Must be a bug in the satnav software. Does it do the same for pizza and kebab takeaways? If so never update, that's a useful bug!

Andrew

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Duncan: We have similar trouble with Historic Scotland up here – preventing changes to listed buildings so that they cannot be brought into a condition in which they can be used – so instead they decay and on occasions have to be demolished because they are so dangerous. Mind you, I had a laugh at their expense when I was the editor of the local paper in Banff. They sent someone all the way from Edinburgh to explain to a local chap why he couldn't paint the name of his business on "a historic wooden beam" which ran across the front of his property. When the guy arrived, the local chap gave the "wooden" bean a sharp tap, and it rang like a bell. Yes, it was an RSJ!

And yes, Andrew, I have bugs in my satnav software which leads me to purveyors of bottles of real ale, fine wines, single-malt whiskies and venison steaks! Fortunately, it being a French car, updates have no effect on anything that would spoil one's appreciation of fine food and drink.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 21/03/2017 23:41:45:

Not sure quite what to make of this:

**LINK**

The Science Museum’s model ship collection, in a new light

… It's a valiant artistic effort; but what it tells us about the Science Museum is sad, to say the least.

MichaelG.

Perhaps if they took a couple of hundred photos of each model then we stack and sharpen them, we might get an idea of what the subject was?

N.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 22/03/2017 20:12:12:

Perhaps if they took a couple of hundred photos of each model then we stack and sharpen them, we might get an idea of what the subject was?

N.

.

Kinda "Marie Celestial"

[Paul LousickParticipant @paullousick59116]

Just completed a 4 day road trip in a Fowler traction engine from Wellington in the central west of NSW to Maitland (Australia), a distance of 350km, travelling at an average speed of 10km/hr. The engine was driven by an 8 man crew, stopping every 2 hours to refuel, oil and fill up with water. We burnt 8 tons of wood, 200kg of coal, 20 litres of oil and used 5000 litres of water.

Our club at Maitland is hosting the Hunter Valley Steamfest next month and it is much more fun to drive the engine than put it on a truck. (Steamfest link http://www.steamfest.com.au/ )

Paul.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Not today but last week when it was warmer, I have overwintered 4 Bee Nuclii and have managed already to find 2 customers so I took advantage of the 16/17 C temperatures to transfer the combs from the wood Nucs. into the customers foam plastic Nucs. They are cheaper than wooden ones.

All is well as a few days later i looked at them and they have drawn comb and I could see eggs in the outside combs,but, the weather has now turned sour and cold again. Just waiting now for the customer to let me know were and when he wants them.

I have definitely lost one main hive over the winter. So now down to 4 main hives again.

Clive

[Adrian GilesParticipant @adriangiles39248]

It never ceases to amaze me with the blinkered thought regarding "listed" buildings. Majority of older buildings would have started life as a small dwelling, and grown with the owners wealth and family needs. Evolving over the centuries, to become what we see now. But the minute "listing " is applied, all evolution stops dead! Some of the decisions taken on replacement items like windows, kitchens, gutters etc, by the authorities, are downright stupid, and in some instances, backward! Common sense seems to have been phased out! It does seem sometimes that the authorities would rather see a building fall down than allow somebody to sensitively refurbish to a reasonable more modern standard.

Edited By Adrian Giles on 22/03/2017 23:41:09

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Some of the decisions taken on replacement items like windows, kitchens, gutters etc, by the authorities, are downright stupid, and in some instances, backward! Common sense seems to have been phased out! It does seem sometimes that the authorities would rather see a building fall down than allow somebody to sensitively refurbish to a reasonable more modern standard.

Have you not realised yet?

Governments do POLICY they don't do common bluddy sense.

Governments do Dogma.

Then they slag off religions for being tied to dogma…

signed

Chairman Ady

[Author]

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