Engineering as it used to be. Part 1.

Woman on a raft suggested that I write on what us old time Engineers were put through to gain a qualification.

A bit of back ground, to begin this saga, that you’ll soon start to be bored to tears with.

I came from a fairly affluent middle class family (The Teddy bear factory will be featured in a  separate post). Anyhoo, I was educated in a prep school and passed the common entrance exam and was accepted by a good public school. The bugbear, however, was that my twin did not pass. This posed a bit of a quandary, and the long and short of it all is that my parents decided to send us both to a fee paying, Prison camp Naval training school.

My education there was abysmal, but finally I left and applied for a career with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

That first day at Poplar technical college was a real eye opener. Not only was I in the environment of the East End of London where the dockers spent a large amount of their time in the pub, but I was pitted against others who had so many more O levels than me.

What surprised me that I was accepted with O levels in maths, english, seamanship, and navigation. Not an engineering bent at all.

From then started my enlightenment into the world of Applied mechanics, Thermodynamics, Naval Architecture, and everything else needed to make a good Marine Engineer.

The one thing that I noticed straight away was that I was in a minority. Most of all accepted had come from technical schools which were abundant in that Era. They’d learnt technical drawing, metalwork, etc. This was to me, equivalent to learning to how to walk five years too late.

Too be continued………………………………(Maybe)

Am I Irish?

I see that the Irish need another €24 billion from the EU. Of course I’m expecting our idiot Chancellor to jump in with another bail out with what he thinks is his money. Sorry George, it’s not your money, it’s my fucking money you’re going to throw away.

I begrudge paying the high rate of tax already. If you count Income Tax, NI contributions, VAT, insurance tax, and all the other myriad stealth taxes, I think you’ll find that the average man in the street is being ripped off to the tune of nearly 40% of their pay.

What I want to see is real cuts in this country. Not just a slowdown in expenditure. I want to see the 300,000 civil servants culled as promised, and funding of the so called charities such as ASH immediately stopped. I want a flame thrower directed at the quangos and the other teat sucking drains on the public’s money.

I want you, Osbourne, and those idiots Cameron and Clegg, to give us that Referendum on withdrawal from the EU that you promised, but have since reneged on. Why are we throwing money at this edifice that is enslaving us with it’s laws that our leaders cannot object too, let alone defeat?

And I should of course finish with that prat Huhne, who wants to switch the lights off by 2015 by adhering to his slavish devotion to useless bird mincers and PV arrays. You know, the things that don’t generate power when the wind doesn’t blow, and when it gets dark.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this government, is as left wing as the last one.

My final comment is: Get out of my life and give me my money back. You C***s.

* I actually like the Irish*

Am I being to harsh? No I’m fucking not.

An honest Climate Scientist

Whatever next?  The vid is 32 minutes long but well worth a watch.

Why?

I started this blog about two years ago. What I can’t understand is why I write the drivel that I come up with. More interesting is that people actually read it and come back for more.

My ghast is truly flabbered.

Do come back and make suggestions, abuse me, in the comments. I will try to reply. (Honest).

If anyone who reads this has a particular issue that they feel needs to be addressed, them do E mail me at Niklowe[at]gmail.com.

That includes you Huw.

I’m truly humbled to have a loyal following. *Especially those from Kent County Council*

It’s difficult to blog every day, but your support makes it worth it. You’re the true heroes, and I salute you for taking hard earned time to follow this blog.  But hey, why don’t you give it a go. You might find it as fun, as this blogger does.

Egging you on.

Fancy bombing the Houses of Parliament, Tripoli, Your next door neighbour, or whatever floats your boat. Here you can do it with a ballistic Cadbury’s creme egg. You need patience as it takes a while for the page to load.

H/T to Max

Shopping

A customer asked, "In what aisle could I find the Irish sausage?"

The shop assistant asks, "Are you Irish?"

The guy, clearly offended, says, "Yes I am.  But let me ask you something.

If I had asked for Italian sausage, would you ask me if I was Italian?

Or if I had asked for German Bratwurst, would you ask me if I was German?

Or if I asked for a kosher hot dog would you ask me if I was Jewish?

Or if I had asked for a Taco, would you ask if I was Mexican?

Or if I asked for Polish sausage, would you ask if I was Polish?"

The clerk says, "No, I probably wouldn't."

The guy says, "Well then, because I asked for Irish sausage, why did you ask me if I'm Irish?"

The clerk replied, "Because you're in Halfords."

(For overseas readers. Halfords is a car accessory shop).

The Census

Just in case you are having a little trouble with your census form, here are a few tips to help.

1.First and most important, your census form will be scanned by a machine. Of course, the machine will only be able to handle your form if it is in good physical condition. If the sheets (which will be automatically cut apart from their binding) are sullied in any way which might gum up the machine, the job will have to be done by an actual person, which will cost more and be very slow although it will have the benefit of providing temporary employment for someone. So be very careful with your form, and do not, repeat NOT, spill coffee over it or smear some of the sheets with marmalade.

 
2.The machine will know which page it's on, and whose form it is reading, by scanning the little barcodes in the bottom right hand corner of each page. So don't, whatever you do, sit idly there filling in the spaces in the barcode with a black pen. You know how it is when your attention wanders and you start doodling. Don't do it.

3.Likewise, the machine will only look for information in the little boxes provided for you to write in. If you make a mistake, and have to cross it out and then put the correct answer outside the box, the machine will be stumped. Nevertheless, we all make mistakes, and if this is what you have to do in order to comply with your legal responsibility, you have little choice. Remember, anything written outside the box will have to be read by a human.

4.Something else that will confuse the scanner is if you absent-mindedly turn the page and write in the boxes upside down, or if you use any peculiar symbols of your own that it can't recognise. So don't do it – unless, of course, your religion requires you to. In this case you probably ought to answer the voluntary question about religion, and add a detailed account of the responsibilities attaching to that particular belief. The census is all about collecting information, after all, so I’m sure they'll be pleased if you give them plenty of it!

5.No doubt when all your personal information is entered into the computer, it will be cross-matched against other information already held by the Stasi thought police kindly and helpful authorities who have only your best interests at heart. If you have made any small errors in the information you have given, this won't work. You know how easy it is to leave a letter out of your name, or get one figure of your telephone number wrong, that sort of thing. To err is human, of course, but I urge you to be very careful and not make any mistakes. And if you do, see previous paragraph.

6.There are one or two questions that cannot be answered honestly and accurately. None of us know with certainty what our ethnic group is, unless we are fanatical family historians and have researched our genealogy for generations past. Even then, if we went far enough back most Europeans would probably have to conclude that their original ethnic group was Aryan, and I believe the Aryans originally came from Northern India, so can they accurately be described as “white” on the form? Really the only honest answer to this question has to be “Don't know”.

7.The form has a big barcode on the front page, and is arranged so that when you put it in the pre-paid envelope, the barcode can be read through the transparent window. If for any reason the barcode can't be read, the package will have to be sorted by hand which will take more time and cost more money, so do make sure the barcode is visible and that you haven't doodled on it. One disastrous scenario which you must avoid is that if the front page of the form became detached (say, by the dog getting it, or your infant child) and you put that in the envelope provided and posted it, the system would log you as having completed the whole questionnaire. But then you would realise your mistake, collect together the remaining sheets, put them in another envelope and send them off. Do make sure you put the right address, and that you don't send a lot of envelopes each with one sheet in, and that you remember to put a stamp on each one. You can imagine the mess it would cause if you made any of these silly mistakes!

I hope you have found these notes helpful, and that we can all play our part in making a mess success of this ridiculously expensive intrusive worthwhile exercise which will be vital to this and future governments in deciding which services we can do without and how much space there is for poor deserving immigrants who need a place to live. I'd like to stress that the reason the form asks how many bedrooms you have and whether you have central heating is NOT because they're planning to billet a couple of Somali families with you.
That would be ridiculous, of course.

Too difficult, Mr Met Plod?

Repeat after me.

Use the Green one for petrol, and the Black one for diesel.

FFS read it. I would make the Officers concerned pay for the repairs out of  their own pockets. No wonder that they can’t even handle a couple of  hundred anarchists.

Oh Dear

I think I may have buggered up filling in my Census form on line.

If you see someone wandering the streets muttering that he has been kicked out of his 12 bedroom home by his white hindu wife, whilst chanting the religious mantra “Smokers will ascend to heaven”, in Albanian. That might be me. Of course the main reason for the wandering is, that in my old age, I’ve forgotten where my 10 company cars are parked.

Oh well, Ho Hum.

Guess?

If you’re that sure of the effects of climate change, then you might think about singing from the same Hymn sheet.

Climate scientist and warmist Andy Pitman on Thursday:

If we could stop emissions tomorrow we would still have 20 to 30 years of warming ahead of us because of inertia of the system.

Climate Commissioner and warmist Tim Flannery on Friday:

If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years

Nicked from Andrew Bolt over at the Herald Sun.