25%. You what?

Is there something you’ve forgotten to tell us Mr Cameron?

The European Union is set to propose new regulations which could see British fuel prices rise by up to 25 per cent.

And that nice Mr Osbourne has let us have a whole 1p back.

Basing fuel tax on energy content rather than volume will mean a significant price rise for haulage companies and private motorists who use diesel.

That means diesel will cost me £1.76 a litre against the £1.41 I’m paying at present. At the moment it costs me £98.70 to fill up my tank. if that rise goes ahead it’s going to cost me £123. 37 in the future. An increase of  £24.67. WTF will that do to our Hauliers? I can see most small hauliers going to the wall and shops running out of goods, if this madness comes about

If this goes ahead we are truly screwed as a nation. Get a grip you cunts and do the right thing. Tell them to taking a running jump into Le Manche.

Monday meandering

 

RAILROAD TRACKS

The US  standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is
4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England and English
expatriates designed the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad tramways and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and
tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial   Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe
(including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used
ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. 
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Bureaucracies live forever.

The next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process
and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be
exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just
wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
(Two horses' arses.)

Now - the twist to the story:

A Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad has two big booster
rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are
solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol
at a factory in Utah .
Engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably
the world's most advanced transportation system, was
determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a
horse's ass!

AND YOU THOUGHT  BEING a horse's ass wasn't important!
Ancient horse's asses control almost everything.

CURRENT Horses Asses in Washington are controlling
everything else.