Symptoms

GCHQ and the NSA will be interested, perhaps even NCC so they can send traffic wardens bearing tickets. Anyway, I think it's great and look forward to many more installations. All we exiles have had up to now was (out of date) Google mapping stuff. Just seen (7.54pm) a couple pushing a pram ... and the bloke's got a mask on and he's looking at the camera.

Some here have suggested I live in cloud cuckoo land.

I could be argued that 'our Nigel' is part of the ruling elite. He did attend Dulwich College, that rather fine public school in South London and then into the City as a commodities trader. I wonder how he got that gig? Oh, wasn't his dad a City stockbroker called Guy Oscar Justus Farage? Yep, Nigel's definitely a man of the people unlike all those listed above.

Maggs wrote: 'We were poor but we were happy' That was true - spending money was really tight for us kids back then! I wrote earlier about squirrelling the 'lunch' tanners to fund my Moscadini(s) exploits but this funding was supplemented by adding the daily school bus fare to the pot. When I joined the 6th Form the normal way to get to the Grammar School was to board a Raisbeck's bus (known as 'chariots' 'cos they appeared to be so old) at the 'Top End' (Red Lion) and pay the thrupence (thrupenny bit or 3d or 3 old pence for our younger viewers) to get down to the Station; no bus meant running from the Top End all the way to school. I always got the bus back. Out of this extra 9d daily funding we had to budget for our snouts as well.

Maggs ... local or regional or central won't really make much difference; they're all as bent as a nine bob note. I'm old enough to remember the scrag end of local council 'corporations' with their Clerk of Works - these were the guys wholly responsible for awarding council building and road contracts. The bosses of building firms and road repair firms always 'dropped in' to the Clerks office at Xmas with a crate of Scotch or a 'brown envelope' hoping it would influence who was awarded the various contracts. What we have now is a scaled up version of what happened in the Clerks office.

I've said it before here and I'll say it again. I blame Esther Rantzen for the lack of discipline in the homes and in schools. Before she setup Childline parents and teachers could discipline brats without the threat of being reported by the brats. Adults are now scared of chastising their charges and the kids know that the adults are scared. Lets not get sidetracked by the kiddy-fiddling issue ... this is about basic manners!

have a look here: http://www.bing.com/maps/?FORM=MMREDR#Y3A9NTQuNjU4MDAxfi01LjY2NTkwMCZsdmw9NiZzdHk9byZlbz0wJnE9QmVkbGluZ3RvbiUyQyUyMFVuaXRlZCUyMEtpbmdkb20= make sure you're in Birds Eye view then zoom in/out and swivel around with the compass. The camera angle is different but it gives an insight into how much has changed.

Acres and acres of coverage today about what'll happen next to the Jockos and the rest of us. Promises, promises, promises but I'll wager very little meaningful change will happen. Yep, GGG "We live in interesting times!" and the arguements over the next few months will be fascinating but it's not in the ruling elite's interest to allow much, if anything, to change.

Her new short story, "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983" is here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/19/hilary-mantel-short-story-assassination-margaret-thatcher And what a good read it is ... just a shame it's friction

Oh no! They've voted to keep trousering the Blighty handouts. We're now going to suffer years and years of McPoliticians on Blighty screens demanding more and more and more. On a positive note the result will now mean there is no threat of a 1000 year Tory Reich as those 40 odd Jocko Labour MPs will help keep the bastards at bay. The bosses at the Acme Dripping & Lard (London) Company were be celerbrating the massive increase in their share price this morning ... obviously there'll be no cross-border trade tariffs due on their daily freight trains going into Waverley Station each morning. Meanwhile, Mars Incorporate, makers of Mars Bars, have also indicated that their daily M6 convoys will continue with deliveries.

I've been watching loads of Jocko stuff on the telly recently and I'm truly shocked that everybody shown, whether voxpop street interviews with punters or formal interviews with McPoliticians, just how tubby they all are. Everywhere you look there's treble chins, bingo wings and fat arses waddling down the Jocko roads ... disgusting! No wonder their bit of the NHS is creaking under the strain and is trousering extra dosh from Blighty.

Good old Janet ... always available for a few column inches on just about any subject including the positive aspects of Zionism. That aside, what she says in that particular article aligns broadly with my view that ALL politicians* are self-serving shysters. *code for all members of the Establishment ... corrupt bastards the lot of them! Vic - perhaps one solution might be to do away with the ruling elites and replace with someone like this: Note to listening GCHQ & NSA: the above is meant as a joke and should be seen in the context of humourous comment.

I met a lad called Hunter, maybe John (but not sure now), at a Derby County v Toon game maybe 20 years ago ... we were guests in the same Executive box at Pride Park. I'm sure he said he lived in Church Row. He'd be possibly early to mid 50s now.

Jimmy Hunter???? Was his Dad the bookie?

Tight sods ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29170642

I can only remember them being a tanner in 67 to 69 (for our younger viewers ... a tanner = 6d or 6 old pence). I only went in at lunchtime from the 6th Form and funded the sessions with my school dinner money. I seem to recall there was a weekly 'championship' board on a wall. There really was an art to the nudge; as you say too much welly and the game would end so the top players knew just how much force to apply.

Part of the joy of playing the pinball machines was to 'nudge' them. For our younger viewers 'nudging' meant vigorously pushing against the machine with your hips to gain extra ball bounce (no, no, no, that doesn't sound right!) off the flippers, posts and cushions. This action left the machines with loose legs. Apparently, there's only one manufacturer left making these things worldwide.

Here's a Jockoland Q & A from today's Guardian, so it might answer some of your queries Willy: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/09/-sp-if-scotland-votes-for-independence-key-questions

Just reviewed that video above ... blimey! It's of a scale that you'd expect only a national government to be able to build; it looks even bigger than the Pentagon. It looks as if a roof of some sort will be erected over that huge circulr trench creating a sort of doughnut. All that banking of earth will certainly make it 'blast-proof' if the balloon ever goes up. What's the bets it'll become a huge server farm for all the macfascists' cloud storage? What fantastic HD quality from that drone ... I want one for Xmas!

Scare stories in the rags this morning about border checkpoints if the Jockos up sticks. Reports that Miliiiiband is suggesting that the new Jockoland, maybe being a new member of the EU, will have to have 'open' borders with the rest of the EU due to the Schengen agreement resulting countless hordes of immigrants decending on the place. As England (currently the UK) isn't a signatory to this treaty it would mean checks at Berwick and similar places along the whole border to prevent the free passage of these Jockoimmigrants into Blighty ... "You're papers please!". Something like this perhaps:

Those long lunch hours coincided with a most productive and creative periods of my working life ... I suspect it had much to do with a 'well-lubricated' relationship with my colleagues - a working lunch, if you like. I agree with you that it wouldn't be permitted these days.

Lived in Greenwich, worked in Poplar (Isle of Dogs). Nobody I knew had 20 mins lunch breaks back then, most had at least an hour and many approaching a couple of hours like me. I recall it only took 6 minutes to walk down the shaft, under the river, up the shaft on the other side so there was plenty of time to go in either direction for pubs (loads also in Greenwich). Even if folks had civilised lunch breaks now they'd be sh*t scared of going to a pub for fear of getting the sack for having the smell of a pint on their breath.

I wonder how many of the crowd chucked themselves into the Tyne screaming, once the Cramlington Budgie Strangler got on Stage?

KeithL, thanks for that link. The Isle of Dogs in the 60s & 70s was a very interesting place and very, very Dickensian. Narrow cobbled street everywhere with tall dark warehousing* looming over everything. If you looked up all these warehouses had iron cranes swinging over the cobbles (to lift goods off carts and up to high-level doors). There were pubs everywhere to serve all the merchant seamen off the ships and the hordes of dockers ... it was obvious to me that another type of 'business' went on in rooms upstairs in some of the pubs. It was a great place to pub crawl. There was another pub called The Gun, just along from the Watermans, and at the entrance to the West India Dock and beside the Met Police River HQ. Even in the dying days of the docks there was still plenty of shipping to watch whilst supping pints on the pub balcony and on one occasion we watched the River Peelers drag a couple of recovered dead bodies off their launch and onto their pontoon jetty (no body bags back then!) I lived in Greenwich at the time and would go through the foot tunnel to get the Isle of Dogs (the Greenwich entrance is right next to the Cutty Sark ship), the other end in the Island Gardens near the Watermans Arms. For some unknown reason half-way under the river the foot tunnel got seriously smaller in diameter ... perhaps the original builders got their dimensions mixed-up. *most of that warehousing has been converted into very swish apartment blocks selling for really serious money.

Looking at various historical maps and applying a bit of basic trigonometry on each of them, it would appear to be in the same place. The variation in the road grading over time would account for the change in the plinth height. Even comparing those juxtaposed photos the cross appears to be in the same place ... curve of road, chimney and gable of that distant building, telegraph pole. Blame the Market Place Club for obscuring the church tower but looking at modern OS maps the sightlines look right. I think what has happened is that Front St must have been slightly re-aligned at some stage and that might have created the impression that the cross had moved. http://communities.northumberland.gov.uk/Bedlington_C14.htm#006188