As we pass into a second year of lockdown, JD has an alternative to banana bread.
These ginger biscuits are better than anything I have found in any shop - they are softer than the concrete hard shop bought ones and if you dunk them for too long they are laible to dissolve into a gingery flavoured tea which is not necessarily a design fault!
I grew up in a household where my mother was an expert cook who would produce a seemingly endless supply of scones, cakes, biscuits, sundry pastries etc.
Cookery programmes on TV have been popular for a long time so why are ready meals and home delivered fast foods so prevalent? Is it laziness or is cookery now a spectator sport with TV having turned it into a competitive activity. No matter, Richard Ingrams was right all those years ago with his quip that fast food was called that because it was not worth waiting for.
My natural curiosity and desire to have a go at various activities led me naturally to try biscuit making and not only was I rather good at it but there is something very satisfying about conjuring up tasty biscuits and then dunking them in a cuppa char!
So herewith my mother's recipe for ginger biscuits. Cheap and cheerful and easy to make!
Ingredients
4 oz. margarine (you can use butter if you wish for a richer taste)
3 oz. sugar
2 generous tablespoons syrup (usually Tate&Lyle golden syrup)
6 oz. self-raising flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
a pinch of bicarbonate
Directions
Melt margarine and sugar in a saucepan over a low heat; add the syrup.
Sieve the flour, ginger and bicarb in a bowl, then add the melted mix of syrup etc.
Mix well until stiff (the mixture stiffens as it cools) then form into small balls, about 1" or so in diameter. Place these on a greased baking tray and leave a good space between them.
Bake at gas mark 5 for 12-15 mins., or until the required shade of ginger.
Away from Covid, Climate Change and the ridiculous state of affairs in the USA, life goes on as normal, well not normal but other matters still come to light. This one was of interest to me as I was an owner of three of these fabulous dogs and the article came out of the blue, though it is not something that was unexpected.
I read in the Times an article stating that the Old English Sheepdog (OES) is in serious decline as a breed: only 226 puppies were registered with the Kennel Club last year, the lowest number since 1960. I am not surprised, I cannot remember when I last saw one in a park or street, they were never numerous but you did come across them.
As with all pedigree dogs fashion has a stake in how popular they are. The current league leaders were in most cases themselves a rarity a few decades ago, but the quest for smaller dogs was not something I thought I would see in this country. The French had cornered the market in what I called restaurant dogs, dogs that would appear at the table with their owners, horrible habit but I could always pass that off as a French idiosyncrasy.
No, we always had proper dogs, Not any more it seems, it's now a toss up between Pit Bulls for the chavs and something you can carry in a handbag; neither can be called proper dogs, both are at extreme ends of the canine spectrum and serve two very different needs of their owners.
The current trend to be different shows with celebs talking about their cross bred dogs such as cockerpoos or such, and the silly prices they fetch; why a mongrel should fetch the ridiculous sums they do is beyond me though it isn’t my money so I have no skin in the game as they say. It is as though there is a race to have the most stupid cross as a badge of honour - Great Dane x Dachshund, the mind boggles but I am sure they are working on it!
My first OES was purchased soon after my marriage. We had always had dogs in the family as had my wife's parents so owning one was not the problem, but what to go for? We both wanted a decent size dog with firstly a good temperament, and would have gone for a German Shepherd, but in the early Seventies the breed was suffering from some bad breeding resulting in hip problems and temperament issues, so that was out. Other larger breeds were either what I called, unfairly, draught excluders - Labs or mad such as Red Setters; Golden Retrievers were also going through a time of bad hips and entropion when an eyelid turns in against the eye itself so another crossed off the list. There were other breeds but unlike today in this fashion-driven world you rarely saw them, so we had little knowledge of their ways.
Knowing we were putting a lot on our plate with looking after one we decided on an OES. Again, the only problem I had was that although you did see them around they were not in big numbers and my knowledge of breeders unlike later was scarce (and the truth about the one we used only came to light later.) Anyway, home he came and soon settled in, but as he matured a problem arose: when taking him out to socialise him, it became apparent he was frightened of his own shadow. Walking along a street he would leap across in front of me at the sound of a gate opening and a lot of similar things spooked him, something as a puppy had happened which made him this way but I never discovered what.
Talking to a fellow dog walker one day in the park we spoke of my problems and he said why don’t you go to the local Dog Training Club. Little did I realise what it would lead to further down the line. Nearly all dog training clubs have a beginners' class or a course for dogs to make them more socially acceptable. The truth is - and I doubt it has changed - these courses pay the hall hire and the rest of the more advanced handlers and dogs benefit from the facilities; that may be an over generalisation but it certainly applied in those days.
As an aside for a pet dog you only need certain basic rules, and all can be imprinted and taught at quite an early age: to learn that no means no, to walk by your side without pulling you all over the place, to come when called (the most difficult to instil in a dog), to stay and to drop on command. The rest is not needed for a pet dog but many dog clubs insist on trying to train pet dogs before they can even get acclimatised to the new surroundings. The only thing a dog club is really good for in puppy training is socialising with other dogs, the rest is common sense.
Oh and sending a dog away to be trained is pointless if you are not trained yourself; the owner/handler needs training first.
As I soon learned with a dog that that is easily distracted, towing him around a hall full of dogs that have no idea why they are there nor the handlers is not the way forward. All initial puppy training should be in a quiet situation and kept as simple as possible for those first steps in obedience training, something I soon learned and acted upon, but progress was slow and he was still spooked by all manner of things and it wasn’t getting any better.
A talk by a very good trainer got me to buy a book that I followed through on. It was an American publication that had a method of training that would be frowned upon, even banned today: it basically made the dog more afraid of you than any outside influences and though I look back in and say never again, all else had failed totally and this was the last resort and it worked, he came on leaps and bounds and the initial hard approach was slowly dropped as he responded.
That old adage ‘you have to be cruel to be kind’ was never more apt, though the experience was not a pleasant one, but it was a different time, not as enlightened as today, nevertheless all else had had absolutely no effect and I had nowhere to go other than forget it all and put up with a dog I could never take off a lead.
So much work had gone into getting to that stage I could walk him down the road without events happening that I took it further. People must have thought I was mad as I tied him to zebra crossing posts and made him stay so as to get him to accept traffic; I would take him to Romford station and wait for trains to come in etc. etc. He was not put in harm's way but it all paid off as he went everywhere with me and after all that was never other than the dog I would want to own.
The training went on and I entered him for a competition at an open show of obedience more out of curiosity than anything else. You start in a beginners' class; much to my amazement he won, beating forty other dogs first time out. That started a journey that ended with him being the first of his breed ever to get a place in a Championship class against the usual suspects of Border Collies and German Shepherds. For a dog with his background it was a hell of an achievement, and he was genuinely unlucky not to win a Championship (the judge harshly marked him out of a win for a minor infringement, bit like a disputed off side decision that goes the wrong way) in the biggest class ever held in a Championship - 97 dogs in total ran that day, and the rules were changed soon afterwards so that no judge would have to oversee more than fifty in a class.
My second OES did even better and with a better handler would have won championships I am sure. I suffered from nerves at those vital moments and dogs sense that and it got through to him when it mattered, but he got two reserve tickets, second places and was chosen to represent the South of England in the first team competition at Crufts.
But that is enough of the training side. The breed attracts attention and the Dulux advert was a God send for breeders, but not quite so good for the breed: I would be asked where to go to buy one, and there were plenty of poor breed kennels in this breed as there are in all the others, but my initial response was to put people off buying one: unless they have actually owned one, no one can contemplate the work involved to keep them in good condition. The weekly grooming alone is not something to be taken lightly: the muddy paws that have to be washed every time out in rainy weather, the washing of the nether regions which get caked if you don't wash and the cutting away of the hair round the privates for the same reason and the same with hair between the toes that would go solid with mud if you fail to do that. Many owners tie the facial hair up away from the eyes because they have obviously difficulty seeing through that thick fringe, but we cut it away, neater and easier and the dog doesn’t look like a big girl's blouse, and as they weren’t show dogs it didn’t matter. These are all tasks that cannot be neglected, for if you do the task is a chore and a long one plus it is not comfortable for the dog; hairy ears also have to plucked and cleaned weekly.
Much of all this is because as with so many breeds the original reason for their existence is long gone.The OES was a droving dog, it was smaller than today's version and had much less of a coat, the current coats are not exactly what a shepherd would want to have to bother with; the old photo below gives an idea of what they originally looked like.
And this one from 1899. Already, showing them was beginning to make changes to the breed that became ever more pronounced over the years.
When I started looking for my second dog I had heard that there were actually a few still working on farms, but tracking them down turned out be a dead end. In desperation I turned to Florence Tilley, then the owner of the most famous OES kennels in the world down in Shepton Mallett. Shepton was her Kennel Club prefix and the history of her kennel went back to around the early 1900s with her father, but I knew she had an encyclopedic mind as regards the breed, so we went down and visited her. At first she wanted to sell me a show dog; it was only when I explained about my first OES and wanted if possible one with some working background she changed her tack and said leave it with her and she would ring.
I expected nothing and carried on looking, fruitlessly, myself, and then nearly six months later I got a call: she had three, and was I interested? We went down that weekend and the story was told. These dogs were not bred by her but came from an old friend, a farmer, this was the last litter he'd bred as he was 90 and he brought the pups over in his Rolls Royce which he had had from new in 1937 I believe, but what was important was he still had a couple working on his farm and these were from that stock; one stood out and he came home with us the same day.
And the rest is history. He romped through the lower qualifying classes and qualified for the Championship class; as I said, no other OES has got anywhere near the heights he did; plus his film with Bernard Cribbins and a stellar cast - he played Bernard's dog in the original Dangerous Davies film about a hapless detective played by Cribbins. He was a special dog and a wonderful friend to us as all were.
The Kennel Club and others have a lot to be ashamed of in the way that breeds have become distorted in looks, size etc. To conform with the winning trends in show dogs many are so far removed from what was originally intended it has become a joke. Most breeds were bred to to have a useful working life, the working group; today's OES would look ridiculous on a farm and would be totally impractical. Even the KC breed standards by which all breeds are judged have become elastic to accommodate what becomes a winning fashion, and in so doing does not ‘improve’ the breed but in many cases creates long-term physical problems.
A good example of how dogs change for the show ring as opposed to a working strain can be seen in Springer Spaniels. Springers as gun dogs are selected for working traits, not how they look; the two side by side are totally different breeds but only one is true to type, whatever the breeders say. Even breeds like the German Sheperd is having fashion thrust upon it, the breed is a guard dog but many of the fashion changes that are now required for winning in the show arena are against the standard set in its homeland; only one can be right and that is the German version. Many other breeds have suffered the same fate - the Bull breeds have become so accentuated in their looks they have trouble breathing as have other pug faced dogs, but still fashion prevails.
I should imagine today anyone looking for an OES like my second one with a working background would be laughed at. He must have been almost the last of a type though even he resembled the modern version as can be seen in the header photo. He is the one on the left, the other was my last OES; he came from show stock, and did remarkably well in obedience up to a point, he simply could not take the pressure of training after a certain point and I retired him and myself from competition.
I had done my bit. The competition at the top level was becoming a one breed event for Border Collies, quite natural that people would want the most intelligent and biddable breed to train and they are without peer, but a lot of the fun had gone out of it and for me it had run its course.
I don’t think the breed will die out. It may have had its zenith in the days when celebrities owned one like Kevin Keegan and Paul McCartney with his ‘Martha.’ It is almost a national symbol after the Bulldog and no doubt fashion will swing back towards real dogs again, in time.
Another musician who defies categorisation is Sun Ra with his fabulous Arkestra(sic), who claimed to have been born on the planet Saturn and took his inspiration from Ancient Egypt!
He was a jazz composer and keyboard player who led a free jazz big band known for its innovative instrumentation and the theatricality of its performances. Listening to his music it is hard to believe he was hired by Fletcher Henderson as pianist and arranger in the late 1940s! Whether you love or hate his music, it is impossible to ignore him or his influence on American music.
Maitlis appears not to distinguish between Palestinians domiciled in Israel who will have been offered the jab like all other citizens, and those who are in the disputed territories where the Palestinian Authority has determined to make its own arrangements using the Russian vaccine.
She also tries to nail the Ambassador on failing to accept a two-state solution but is reminded that it's a solution ruled out by the Palestinian side.
The role of Parliament is not to pass laws but to challenge
them. When the major parties are agreed, the dissident voices will have to be
heard outside, instead. Labour’s answer to the Government’s Covid strategy has
been along the lines of ‘we would have done much the same, but earlier and
worse.’ So it should not have come as a surprise to Sir Keir Starmer when he
went for a walkabout in Bath the other day, to encounter not an adoring public
but a furious publican https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56805144
.
When the Opposition forgets its duty to oppose – the
Spectator’s editorial on 10 April called it a ‘collapse of democratic scrutiny’
- HMG is unlikely to be suitably hard on itself. On the contrary, in the panic
to ‘do something’ it drove through the Coronavirus Act in a single day in each
House, worded so as to give itself not only wide powers to restrict our
movements (Schedules 21 and 22) but also a shockingly relaxed six months
between Parliamentary reviews, the last having taken place on 25 March in the
space of a mere 3 ½ hours https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2021-03-25/debates/9701394F-FF53-4364-85E1-F017B13CE921/Coronavirus
.
As Lord Sumption noted in his October lecture ‘Government by
Decree’ https://resources.law.cam.ac.uk/privatelaw/Freshfields_Lecture_2020_Government_by_Decree.pdf
and as reconfirmed by the Health Secretary in the 25 March debate, the Government
is basing its measures on the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984,
which is worded in a dangerously woolly way. Lord Sumption commented: ‘It is a
basic constitutional principle that general words are not to be read as
authorizing the infringement of fundamental rights,’ and contrasted that 1984
Act with one the Government might have chosen to use instead, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/36/contents
.
Like the 1984 Act the 2004 Act allows the Government carte
blanche, but recognising the perils of such power it also requires, says
the noble Lord:
‘a high degree of Parliamentary scrutiny… Emergency
regulations under the Civil Contingencies Act must be laid before Parliament in
draft before they are made. If the case is too urgent for that, they must be
laid before Parliament within seven days or they will lapse. If necessary,
Parliament must be recalled. Even if the regulations are approved, the
regulations can remain in force for only 30 days unless they are renewed and
reapproved. Unusually, Parliament is authorised to amend or revoke them at any
time.’
The Government’s information and strategies may or may not
be correct in every detail, but it should not be left to the news and social
media, demonstration and riot to provide that scrutiny and opposition.
Perhaps our long involvement with the European imperial
project and its masses of secondary legislation has led us to forget how our
own system works. Westminster resembles a vintage car put up on bricks while
the owner was abroad, and now it has to be serviced to make it roadworthy
again. Before the law machine roars into life and straight for the nearest
tree, we need the brakes and steering provided by the committees, the
Opposition and the House of Lords.
My suggestion, which I hope you will accept, is that we
should pick up on Lord Sumption’s observations and ask our MPs to press the
Government to re-base its extraordinary power grab on the Civil Contingencies
Act 2004 so that an equally extraordinary degree of scrutiny can be applied. If
that had happened on 25 March, the 30-day review would be due this week, rather
than next September.
MPs will only respond to their own constituents, so please
find your representative and contact them as per the information on TheyWorkForYou
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ .
This is somewhere on the coast road to the north of Valparaiso*. I wasn’t sure of the exact location so I searched Google maps and found it and borrowed a couple of screen shots. (see below)
This painting is 8" x 8" and is acrylic on canvas. I did a watercolour (15" x 15") ages ago which has been hanging on the wall for the past twenty years or so. The second Google maps image below shows the view from within the painting looking out over the Pacific. The cliff top at left is where I stood to take a few photographs which I have used as the basis for the paintings. That original painting was a composite of the photographs.
A very spectacular location, I’m sure you will agree. In fact the whole coastline is spectacular. A few changes since I was there. They have some street lights now and the roadside caff looks as though it has been abandoned (blue in my pic but a sort of dereliction cream in the Google view)
*The place is known as the Roca Oceanica - here is a photographic view from above:
- and more photos and information from a travel website:
*An earlier version of this post originally appeared at Nourishing Obscurity on 25/10/2014; that original post has been lost in NO's technical problems.
I came across whilst rummaging through the detritus one carries with one when you move house - why we do this is a subject for another day - but anyway, looking for some papers I came across an old menu from the Seventies from Berni Inns. Easy to laugh at such places now, yet going by the menu it offered better fare than many fast food outlets today, and you could get an alcoholic drink - no skinny lattes then, thank God.
So as one does I started delving into archives of old menus, from the cafe restaurants of our youth and before to those early fine dining establishments that we went to if we had the cash for a special occasion.
We soon forget, yet some things are very obvious in those periods, how the posh restaurants insisted in printing menus in French which hardly anyone understood and resulted in calling the waiter over and stabbing a finger at what one thought was a dessert to be snootily told it was a vegetable and then having to cringingly ask for advice on what was available in that section, only then for the waiter to, still snootily, repeat the offerings in French with an English translation for the proles.
When they started to put English translations underneath the French version it was the last throw of the dice in pretentiousness.
I remember well the first time I took my to be wife for our first proper meal, lunch at Rules, London's oldest (1794) restaurant:
Having done my ‘homework’ I ordered the Châteaubriand and settled back on the banquette to peruse the wine list. I knew very little about wine in those days apart from my initiation into the intricacies of German wine labels, so when the wine waiter came calling I ordered the Rudersheimer Rosengarten and the wine waiter said ‘good choice’; a kindly man under the circumstances because it was anything but.
In those days fine dining was for the other people. We had the first signs of chain restaurants in the likes of Bernie Inns and others, it made a change from the plastic cheese roll under a glass dome cooking quietly on the pub counter.
I remember Woolworth had a rather good cafe, it was only when researching this I discovered just how comprehensive their pre-war menu was:
Apart from an early attempt at the bottom of the menu to garner feedback, the other item of note is the amount of meat products on the menu and ‘lobster salad’, in Woolworths!
Higher up the scale, this menu from Wheelers The Ivy gives another insight into how the other half ate in the Fifties, still clinging to the French language and a preponderance of meat and fish dishes. Good to see the old favourites up there, the potted shrimps and prawn cocktail, so derided since but making a comeback now:
Menus from other posh eateries abound and none are posher than Buck House. A Queen's menu from 1906 shows nine courses and again plenty of protein; naturally at this moment in time the menu is again in French. Magnums, quite rightly, of champagne for Derby Day: they must have had a tip.
The great ocean liners that dominated transatlantic travel and vied for national pride with elegance and speed for those first class passengers and made sure they never went without during their voyage. Eight courses at the Captain's table, I bet that went down well - I’ll get my coat...
All things are relative to the age but sometimes there are surprises on these menus in that what are considered delicacies today and have a price to match, were not so in days gone by. Oysters and foie gras were cheap and plentiful, as two examples; lobster as on the Woolworth's menu was available almost everywhere as were ortolans; today you struggle to find decent whelks.
The one below I actually remember. Although the fare is similar to the others a couple of items stand out: tripe and onions, and marrow bones; long time since I saw those two on a menu.
Today we are used to buying products that are cheaper than in the past because of modern big farming techniques and international trade, but not everything works that way. This wine list from a Cunard liner in 1927 shows the price for a bottle of Chateau Latour at 12/6; £1 then equates roughly to £44 today, making that bottle in today's money around £27 and that is a restaurant price; today a bottle of Latour retail would set you back in the region (depending on vintage) of £400-600 a bottle. You really could drink yourself to death in style for very little money then.
With all of the menus you can see there is an awful lot of meat, fish and game on offer. In today's world full of fatties and those same fatties being urged to do away with meat as are the rest of us, you do wonder why so few in those days were fat and yet today fatties are everywhere, and I don’t care if using that word offends, it should because there is absolutely no need to get in that state.
Maybe McDonalds have to share some guilt in today's fattism: ‘buy them by the sackful’ is not very helpful when wanting to lose weight!
And when did you last see a seafood menu like this one? - and while you are perusing the menu, do not play with the candelabres:
But today those whole plates of steak have disappeared, we are presented with artistically arranged plates of very little for very much. At least the Argentinians know how to cook and present a steak - all vegans look away now…
Josquin des Prez (French: c. 1450/1455 – 27 August 1521), often referred to simply as Josquin, was a French composer of the Renaissance. His original name is sometimes given as Josquin Lebloitte and his later name is given under a wide variety of spellings in French, Italian, and Latin, including Iosquinus Pratensis and Iodocus a Prato. His motet Illibata Dei Virgo Nutrix includes an acrostic of his name, where he spelled it "Josquin des Prez".
He was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime.
Following Sunday's piece about disinformation re Israel, here's a stunning (literally - see the faces!) speech to the UN by the son of a Hamas founder, dynamiting the 'PLO good, Israel bad' narrative:
'Who the h*ll let this b*st*rd off the reservation?'
'If Israel did not exist, you would have no-one to blame,' says Musab Hassan Yousef.
During the Covid crisis (?) there has been an undercurrent of
activity around Boris’s ‘green deal’, not surprising really as without the
distraction of the virus more of this would have made it into the news, in what
form is another matter.
The Telegraph has put together a decent summary of all
the snippets that have been leaked in the last twelve months, though it still
leaves out other extra costs should this push to be carbon neutral by 2050 goes
ahead as the Climate Change Committee insists it does. Whether any of this is feasible is doubtful even if all the
requirements could be met. The DT had an article that for once was not blind to the
pitfalls and obstacles in the way of achievement. It doesn’t go nearly far
enough though, the costings of full implementation for the average household are enormous, and it's not clear how many of those people who are all for saving the planet
realise how much they will have to pay; not many I would bet, and for what exactly? As with
Covid we are only told what they want us to hear. A good example of that is the news that we have today on the
BBC website seen below. Great Britain's electricity
system was the greenest it had ever been at lunchtime on Easter Bank Holiday
Monday, its operator has said.
Sunny and windy weather, coupled with low demand for power,
led to a surge in renewable sources of energy, National Grid Electricity System
Operator said.
It meant low-carbon energy sources made up almost 80% of
Britain's power.
There was no coal generation on the grid and just 10% of
power was from gas plants, the operator added.
The caveat is in there: sunny and windy weather. Without
those there is no renewable energy produced; as on earlier days this month when
Gridwatch showed wind producing just 0.5% on one day, that is a statistic you
never see in a headline from those pushing the agenda.
Roger Harrabin the BBCs resident envoy for CC then
says….”That will need much more energy storage than is currently available”.
There is no storage available and no sign again of any means to capture energy
that amounts to anything meaningful now or in the future as it stands.
I am not going to say any more about the failure to ensure
sufficient base load for the future predicted needs, it has been well trailed
with the National Grid predicting if all the proposals come into being there
will be a need for a 60% hike in the base load available to fulfil the demand.
And there is no sign of anything that will make that possible
on the horizon. Doubling the number of windmills doubles the amount of energy
needed from elsewhere when the wind doesn’t blow, it is that simple. Among the items in the DT article that have been aired are
many of the obvious ones, this is the third article in the DT since October
last year that has an air of disbelief that any of this can be achieved and
still it is far too kind, but at least a querying voice is being raised along
with doubts from the CC commmittee.
The image below shows what is being asked of the average
householder; maybe not everything but the heat pumps are central to the
Government's thinking.
What you can add to that is
any property that needs these extensive works will also have to pay for all the
usual home comforts that will be destroyed putting all this in: decoration, carpets, new electric instead of gas hobs, and the bigger radiatorss that are not
included here as the heat pumps work at a lower temperature and to maintain
today's comfort zone bigger rads will be needed.
Needless to say the official answer to lower temperatures is that it is good for our health and the air quality will improve. The next step will
be living in a tent where the air quality will be even better, but you will
have nowhere to hang a radiator; perhaps that is the end goal and all this is
just flim flam, who knows any more.
Heat pumps have a big drawback: they work at lower
temperatures, they can work at higher ones but become very expensive. With the
high cost of electricity against that of gas it is going to make heat pumps a
luxury, many will not switch and many will not be able to stand the cost of
switching. Electricity is four times the cost of gas because of the costs
passed on to the consumer from environmental programmes and social measures
such as the Warm Homes Discount which gives some households cheaper energy
bills. These extra costs are not added to gas bills.
Naturally some in government would like to see gas loaded
with extra costs to ‘incentivise’ switching, which shows how much they live in
a bubble: charge extra to get people to switch to something they will have to
pay even more for!
The government's published plan to tackle climate change wants
600,000 heat pumps a year installed every year by 2028, but who wants them? Certainly no one who has thought it through; some eco zealots with deep
pockets - remember, the government has withdrawn its grant scheme.
Ah, they say, the real costs as production of heat pumps
increases will come down; by how much? They are so much dearer than gas boilers so they are never going to compete on price, and in that case who would be mug
enough to pay for one now? Average gas boilers including fitting currently run
in the £1000 bracket, depending on size and make.
Are the government's friends and backers in the building
industry behind all this? Are they installing heat pumps, underfloor heating, triple glazing in the shoe boxes they call homes these days. Of course not: the
building industry is there to make as much money as possible while spending as little as it
can.
For decades, we have lagged behind many in Europe with our building regulations as to insulation, glazing etc. which means a large majority of the
housing stock is below par in energy efficiency because successive governments
have allowed it to be. Now the same government wants the general public to pay
for that lack of foresight, though with the building industry the big builders
have been quite happy to go along with sub-par regs as it means more for less.
In effect, the public are being asked to pay substantially
more for housing. The government's response to that fact is that we should take out longer
mortgages or extend current ones to pay for the upgrades; if I was in the last
couple of years of a 35 year mortgage I know what my answer would be, and with
average wages 20% down in real terms from 2008 who has the extra cash anyway?
People who can claim up to £240k in expenses from the public
purse have no right to expect the public to pay for their fantasies, the same
tax-paying public in the private sector that will also be paying for the
billions required to upgrade social housing; or are the printing presses just
going to keep on running?
I find it extraordinary that people like Bill Gates can
lecture the world on how it should behave so as to save the planet when they themselves live a high maintenance lifestyle and don’t even justify why there should be a
difference for them.
Bill Gates is not alone in being a total hypocrite but for
the record he owns four private jets, a seaplane and a ‘collection’ of
helicopters; he also collects Porsche cars and has the usual Mercedes and BMWs
plus limousines. Recently he ordered the
building of a yacht, the one omission he had in the billionaire class.
His various very large homes are supplemented by being the
biggest private land owner in the USA. He currently owns 242,000 acres of prime
farmland, why? He has never shown any interest in farming. It has all to do with
power: land owners on that scale have always had power; it is also suggested that it
is a tax avoidance scheme and probably is. Also, he was recently involved in the
bid to be the largest private jet base operator; this comes as commercial jet
operation slumps in the wake of the Corona virus and private jets take up the
slack, for some, flying to destinations no longer being used by commercial
airlines. Has any of this got anything to do with saving the planet. No, of
course it hasn’t, yet, and I use Gates as a prime example, governments are in
league with him and others of a similar ilk. It is nothing to do with climate
change, it is about money.
Many of the big institutions and oil companies have seen the
light: they are taking the easy way out of their’ dirty’ business. They see
that governments and people of influence want to follow the climate change agenda,
they see drilling licenses being withheld, oil exploration becoming uneconomic, so they diversify into sustainable energy. Why not? There are big subsidies
awaiting them there and they spread out into energy supply and anything else that
sees a government grant.
With banks and financial institutions now going green and
refusing to support fossil fuel extraction the circle is almost complete.
All that is needed is enough celebs to tell us what is good
for us, and we got it, a hundred signed a pledge, including Jude Law, Mel B,
Cumberbatch et al and stated…
‘Like you...we are stuck in this fossil-fuel economy and,
without systemic change, our lifestyles will keep on causing climate and
ecological harm.’
‘Our lifestyles’: shurely shome mishtake!
There are hundreds of examples of double standards, this one
by Elizabeth Warrenwho also has a problem with her ancestry takes some
beating….
The one thing that comes out of all this is the fact that no
one has voted for future impoverishment, no one has been asked their views as
to the way forward or not on anything to do with climate change. It is all
driven by vested interests, green lobbyists who only represent a small section
of the population and front persons such as Gates and the doom goblin; all
chant the same 'we are doomed, at the tipping point, we have only x years' and so
on, it has all been heard before and nothing has come to pass, yet still
billions are poured into something that we almost certainly cannot change if it
does happen.
The predictions are all based on projections from the same
sort of sources that projected the world was about to die from Covid, and like
Professor Ferguson for reasons unexplained the same people, wrong before, are
still getting a platform to spout the same garbage.
We are not getting the truth. Any dissenting views are from
‘deniers’ who are cancelled, sidelined or ridiculed for having a different
view, for there can only be one way forward.
Unless some common sense is brought into the climate change
debate we are all doomed, to a life of restrictions and deteriorating living
standards, all at great cost. Our current economic situation says no to all this
as it is not affordable even if it was necessary or desirable. Like many I am
not holding my breath on this, there is something amiss and we are not getting
the truth, and no one is demanding it.
Bung Eye is an occasional series focusing on unconscious-to-deliberate misrepresentation by the news media and other influencers.
Today we look at an extraordinary book alleging systematic antisemitism among news media, 'information centres', NGOs etc dealing with Israel and the surrounding occupied territories. _________________________________________________________________________________
Tuvia Tenenbom, a USA-based writer who was brought up in an ultra-Orthodox (religious study only) family in Israel but rebelled, has written a number of books exploring hidden antisemitism in different countries (including, most recently, the UK.)
He is either the biggest liar and best fiction writer I have ever read, or he is telling the truth, in 'Catch the Jew!' (2015), his exploration of issues in Israel and the 'occupied territories.' If it's the truth the charivari of characters he meets is almost surreal; read and see for yourself.
He is able to go where few other Jews can, because he happens to be a chubby Western-looking blond and can masquerade as 'Toby the German' when among the Palestinians and Bedouin - they love Germans and some tell him that the latter showed how to deal with Jews.
This attitude is hardly new. According to Mark Steyn, when mass-murderer Adolf Eichmann was captured in 1960 and brought to trial in Israel, a Saudi newspaper headline read 'Arrest of Eichmann, Who Had the Honour of Killing Six Million Jews.'
The most disturbing aspect of Tenenbom's forays is that they reveal not only merely the continuing vehement hostility towards Israel of her neighbours, but the foreign support for the latter that includes bias, misrepresentation and fakery by supposedly impartial observers.
Journalists?
Here is an example of the British Press at work, when interviewing a Druze villager in the Golan Heights at a time when it is feared a conflict with Syria may lead to the use of chemical weapons:
Do you have gas masks? - No.
Did the Israeli authorities supply you with gas masks? - No.
But in general, Israeli authorities supply Israeli citizens with gas masks, right? - Yes, I think so.
They give masks to their citizens but not to you. Right? - I think that they do.
The Jews get it but you don't. Interesting. - I don't know.
They didn't offer you any mask, did they? - No. I think they distribute masks only in the big cities, like Tel Aviv or Jersualem.
But do they or don't they distribute them to the locals here, the other people, the Jews? - Maybe. I don't know.
Is it possible that they distribute masks to 'them' but not to you? - Could be.
So they offer the masks to Jews but not the Druze. Really interesting!
At this point [says Tenenbom] the villager is totally confused. lights up a cigarette, and talks to another villager sitting by him. As for the journalist, he watches me looking at him and his face turns angry. He gives me a spiteful look and moves away.(pp. 233-4)
Diplomats?
It seems they are not above pulling stunts, either. In September 2013, a French diplomat called Marion Fesneau-Castaing was in a party delivering aid including tents to Bedouin in Khirbet al-Makhoul in the West Bank. Supposedly this is an example of Israelis brutally demolishing Arab homes, though Tenenbom sees no facilities there and the remains of the building look ramshackle and temporary; when he asks them where they live they indicate the surrounding hills. Fesneau-Castaing alleges that she was forced to the ground from her vehicle and says, 'This is how international law is being respected here.'
This followed an attempt at assistance earlier that week by the Red Cross. A spokesperson for the ICRC, Nadia Dibsy, says she was there at the Frenchwoman's incident and 'saw her being beaten with her own eyes.' When pressed, Dibsy changes her story and says 'I was not there on Friday.'
On a later occasion Tenenbom asks a Palestinian official who oversees such matters about the incident. He is told that the soldiers punched Fesneau-Castaing first, she fell down and then punched them back when she got up. Pointing at his computer, the official says 'he can show me all this right now, since he has it all on video.' Unlike other journalists, Tenenbom goes further and asks to see the evidence; the Palestinian replies, 'We are out of time' and that he must leave right now.
Tenenbom finds an Iranian news site on his iPad and checks their edited version of the video:
'In it I see Marion in the driver's seat, cut to Marion on the ground, and then cut to Marion punching a soldier. How Marion got to the ground is not shown, which suggests that she might have gotten there on her own for the purposes of picture taking. In the image provide by the Iranian news site even the soldiers around her seem to be surprised to see her on the ground. Interestingly, in the BBC photo the face of the soldiers were cut from the frame. Great work of journalism.'
Eye witnesses and victims?
The writer goes to the village of Burin, where allegedly the Israeli army comes 'every second day' to burn houses and throw bombs. There is one smoke-blackened room in the house he visits, but when he asks to see other burnt houses the answer is no. Tenenbom asks for evidence rather than stories; the lady of the house says she took pictures of the event on her cellphone. It can all be proven! He asks to see the pictures; she comes back with the phone. Can he see the pictures? Well not exactly, reports the writer: 'The pix are gone. The phone, how sad, has broken.'
Film and documentary makers?
The theme of image-making leads Tenenbom to meet someone from the Israel Film Fund. In the previous ten years, the man tells him, there have been at least 25 movie co-productions between Germany and Israel, 60 per cent of which have to do with politics; none right-leaning.
Tenenbom goes to the New Fund for Cinema and TV to check funding for non-fiction documentaries. In their spokesman's estimation, '80 per cent of Israeli-made documentary films that are political are co-produced with Europeans, and when I say "European" I mean mainly the Germans, who on average fund 40 per cent of the cost per film.'
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs)?
We've already seen a shifty assertion by a local ICRC spokesperson in the diplomat-punching episode above. There is also some question of being selective in their targets: the International Committee of the Red Cross - exclusively Swiss board members - has declared Gaza (from which the Israelis withdrew their forces in 2005) still to be an 'occupied territory,' but when Tenenbom asks them whether this is also their position on Cyprus and Tibet, they promise to reply later; in follow-up correspondence, they tell him that their legal reading is communicated confidentially to the conflicting parties but 'the ICRC could later communicate its classification publicly.'
Similar suspicions of bias arise, Tenenbom reports, with The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). One estimate of the number of Arab refugees from Israeli-occupied territory in 1948 is 700,000, but UNRWA appears to have turned to including in the numbers descendants not born there, bringing the total up to five or even eleven million; however, UNWRA say they don't have the figure for 1948.
There are swarms of NGOs involving themselves in the region. An Israeli army officer tells Tuvia that there are 300 organisations in the West Bank, excluding Gaza where there are a further 100. Israeli NGOs - mostly foreign-financed - number merely about a dozen. Money is pouring in from abroad, the main sources being first, the USA and second, Germany [as at the time of Tenenbom's writing this book.] The undercover visits Tenenbom makes to Palestinians and Bedouin do not suppport the narrative of miserable slum living - the houses he sees are generally very nice, inside if not always outside, and there seem to be many communal facilities being built and paid for by foreigners.
Now one may say that you find what you look for, and clearly Tenenbom's mission is to uncover the disinformation and foreign interference within and without Israel. I don't think he tells any untruths, but he's not concerned to go into details about the ways in which Israel defends itself from its neighbours.
Nevertheless one could argue that the outside world is being bamboozled by pro-Arab (if not anti-Jewish) PR, and the sums of money thrown into the area in this way are in effect providing aid and comfort to the anti-Zionists, possibly including terrorist organizations (as, it is said by some, Noraid for the IRA.) Also, has Israel been targeted for this pot-stirring because it is a small country and easier to subvert than Turkey or China?
US foreign policy is highly important in all this. Several previous US Presidents had promised to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and not done so; in 2017, Trump actually did it, and what a fuss that caused at the United Nations! Now, apparently determined to undo everything President Trump did, whether good or bad, the new incumbent (or his administration) is proposing to resume funding Palestinians directly and indirectly to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Tenenbom does not show to us a dislike for the Arabs he meets - his disapproval is reserved for the 'self-hating' elements among the Jewish/Israeli left and their supporters. He concludes his book by saying that since Israel is divided internally on political issues, whereas her enemies are of one mind towards her and have powerful Western friends, then the country is unlikely to survive for much longer. Perhaps Trump's actions since this book was written have bought some time; whether that changes the final result remains to be seen.
One wonders what would happen if, magically, all the Israelis were suddenly transported to some other territory thousands of miles away. Would this actually be the answer to Arab prayers? If their foreign aid then dried up completely, and the American military-industrial establishment could refrain from bombing and subversion in the region, would this usher in an era of permanent peace and brotherly love on the Arab Street? Between Iran and Iraq, between Sunni and Shi'a?
Or is Israel not rather a convenient enemy?
Would there be more chance of a stable peace, albeit an uncomfortable one, if outsiders could stop building public perception and influencing international policy on a foundation of lies?
John Hartford, Tony Rice Vassar Clements "Steam Powered Aereoplane" ( sorry about the poor quality but it is the only live performance I can find):
When I first heard this I thought it was another typical piece of whimsy from John Hartford.
Steam trains, steam rollers, steam ships I knew about. Even a few steam cars in the early days of motoring and, more recently, I’ve heard of steam bicycles but a steam plane? It seemed highly unlikely; how would it carry enough water for example? Water is rather heavy and it would need a very powerful aircraft to lift such a weight off the ground but then I came across these two stories:
"On 20th April 1933 William Besler took off from Oakland Airport, California in a steam driven aircraft which he and his brother George had designed andbuilt. It was the result of three years of work and secret experimentation in a machine shop in Emeryville, California.
“This blue machine, with William Besler at the controls, sped down the runway and climbed into the air without a sound except the low whine of the propeller and the hum of wind through the wires. Swinging back over the field at 200 feet, the pilot shouted ‘Hello!’ and heard the answering calls from spectators below.”
I had never heard of a steam plane before I came across that page on the web So I wondered if there might be film of it somewhere and I found some here (no sound):
There is also this promotional film made by the Besler Corporation which features the steam driven vehicles made by the company. I had heard of the Stanley Steamer motor car but as far as I know it could not reach the 85mph claimed for Besler's car!
*An earlier version of this post originally appeared at Nourishing Obscurity on 27/9/2011; that original post has been lost in NO's technical problems.
Lonnie Donegan was known as 'the king of skiffle' The name 'skiffle' was suggested by trumpeter Ken Colyer's brother Bill after the Dan Burley Skiffle Group of the 1930s. Donegan played, along with Chris barber, in Ken Colyer's Jazzmen during the early 1950s.
Colyer left the band in 1954 after which then became the Chris Barber Jazz band. During the intervals of their shows Donegan with Barber on double bass and Beryl Brydon playing a washboard, the trio would play American folk and blues songs by the likes of Woody Guthrie or Leadbelly, as they had done previously with Colyer's jazzmen.
Barber's first recording included the skiffle trio's version of Leadbelly's Rock Island Line which was later released as a single and became a huge success eventuall selling three million copies!
A friend living in central Portugal tells us how coronavirus restrictions are operating there.
Cafes are closed except for take-out, so the workmen in the nearby town buy their coffees and sit with their mates on the wall like swallows on a telephone wire, gassing happily at each other. Unlike in the UK, there seem to be no police swooping down on them in supercharged Vauxhall Astras; this is Europe, where the authorities make crazy rules and private individuals cheerfully ignore them.
Shops are sitting ducks for officialdom, though, so they have to comply. Our friend was asked for donations for a children's charity and tried to buy supplies in the supermarket. 'Non-essential' items are screened off - you can buy food there, and disposable nappies, but baby clothes: no.
Same for women's lingerie, and adult clothes generally. Our friend is now ashamed to hang her pyjamas on the line because of the holes in them.
Speaking of washing, she ordered a supply of eco washing powder by post from abroad; the cost was c.€35 but the import duty €48.The Portuguese have form when it comes to rapacious imposts. Back in 2018 someone there showed me a second-hand Triumph Stag that he imported; the Government wanted €58,000 to let him register the vehicle. It's illegal under EU rules, but my acquaintance explained that Portugal is happy to pay the fine every year, because the swindle is so lucrative.
So, naked babies, holes in your underwear and robbery by post: good going, Senhores.
So it's not only the Germans who let power go to their heads.
Balham, UK, on Good Friday, part of the most important festival in the Christian calendar:
Standing at the altar was a nice touch, don't you think? The cherry on top of the cupcake. What next - occupying the aron hakodesh in a synagogue, or the mihrab of a mosque?
I think we've come a long way from Dixon of Dock Green. Btw who snitched on these worshippers?
A representative of Polish Catholic Mission Balham, which runs the church, added worshippers "obeyed" the police "without objection".
"We believe, however, that the police have brutally exceeded their powers by issuing their warrant for no good reason," the spokesman added.
"We regret that the rights of the faithful have been wronged on such an important day for every believer, and that our worship has been profaned."
And here, in Canada, SIX police are needed to barge into a church - this time, without a warrant (see how the overreach begins so quickly?)
Even more astonishing is their slowness to leave, when they know exactly that they have no leg to stand on, legally. The pastor is driven to ask them if they are capable of understanding English. Should he have called the police?
What an irony, that a faith for which many have been prepared to accept martyrdom should be crimped by uniformed bullies 'saving' them from a tiny risk to their health.
There's a good piece here on legal protections for freedom to worship:
Apparently he thinks the PM is a ‘buffoon’ – now that Sir
Alan is no longer an MP he can indulge in such un-Parliamentary language – and
many of Sir Alan’s former colleagues are also the targets of his insults.
Perhaps he might have spoken differently - at least in public - had he
succeeded in his bid for the Party leadership in 2005, or in his attempt in
2019 to invalidate Boris Johnson’s new government https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7271967/Boris-gears-Brexit-battle-foreign-office-minister-Alan-Duncan-QUITS.html
.
However I seem to detect a certain lack of logic in his
diary reference (18 April 2017) to ‘extreme Brexiteer nutters’, presumably
meaning much of the general public rather than merely some of his colleagues.
Sir Alan served as an MP for nearly three decades, and also
as a Minister in Her Majesty’s Government. What did he think he was doing? What
did he imagine Brexit was about?
Brexit was not about restoring power to ‘the people’. We do
not usually govern ourselves by plebiscite – the Referendum was one such, but
only needed because Parliament had forgotten its duty and PM Cameron, together
with the media establishment, had been so completely out of touch with the
people.
Brexit was the reassertion, not of the public’s, but of Parliament’s
sovereignty. Lord Justice Laws, in his 2002 ruling on the appeal re ‘Thoburn
v Sunderland City Council’, said http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2002/195.html
(para. 59):
‘… there is nothing in the ECA
which allows the Court of Justice, or any other institutions of the EU, to
touch or qualify the conditions of Parliament's legislative supremacy in the
United Kingdom. Not because the legislature chose not to allow it; because by
our law it could not allow it. That being so, the legislative and judicial
institutions of the EU cannot intrude upon those conditions. The British
Parliament has not the authority to authorise any such thing. Being
sovereign, it cannot abandon its sovereignty.’ (my emphasis)
It took 30 years from our first entering the EEC to get this
clarification, and there can be little doubt that the Continental intention was
always to destroy national sovereignty by degrees; but with a great effort,
Gulliver broke the threads and sat up. We’re still picking off the fluff.
Now it may be that Sir Alan believes we should be a uni-people
governed remotely by a committee whom we do not elect and cannot reject, but I
do not see how this squares with his espousal of libertarianism. Indeed, as we
have now fallen under the control of a watered-down and so far largely
well-intentioned healthcare version of revolutionary France’s Committee Of
Public Safety, I should have been pleased to see Sir Alan’s strictures on our
sudden and almost complete loss of liberty, enforced by gendarmes keen to
overreach their already broadened powers.
Especially, I fail to understand why his roles as an MP, and
sometime British Government Minister, are consistent with a Remainer’s implicit
commitment to vitiate and ultimately abolish the sovereignty of the Crown in
Parliament.
So if he asks why I do not take him as seriously as he does,
I am tempted to give him the advice he gave to Boris Johnson: ‘Look in the
****ing mirror!’
I wrote a piece on velodromes many years ago; this is not an update as the original has been lost in space or somewhere similar. Many today of those engaged in or interested in track cycling have never seen a velodrome that doesn’t look like the ones in Manchester and the Olympic Park in London: all are indoors and have a standardised size of 250 metres in length, despite there not being an official laid down length; all now conform, partly because records can be more uniformly set on a standardized track, as in athletics.
Whilst that makes sense it is on the assumption that all velodromes are indoors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before the indoor velodrome became the ‘norm’ for Olympic and World Championships, indoor tracks were of varying lengths as explained below. There was a period when they tried to make outdoor tracks conform for the same events and they made them 333 metres long, i.e. three laps to a kilometre, but the indoor 250 metre tracks took over before many were established,
Early velodromes had no such constraints and that showed when I was riding, as many of the tracks in the UK and abroad had all sorts of strange quirks in surfaces, track length and degree of banking. There was also the matter of the actual shape: in today's homogenised world that doesn’t make sense, but when cycling first became a big spectator sport it was track cycling that brought in the spectators and tracks were put up where they could be fitted in, no one worried about any conformity, and it was one of those items no one really gave much thought to when I was riding; if anything it added to the experience.
Those ‘odd’ tracks were just part of the circuit and were treated as such,.I never heard anyone castigating the fact that they didn’t all conform; the only complaint was that some had a surface, like Fallowfield (1892) in Manchester (the long gone home track of Reg Harris, probably still our greatest track sprinter) where if you fell off it would tear your skin away, such was the abrasive nature of it, until later it was resurfaced.
Fallowfield also had that rare distinction of hosting an FA cup final in 1893 when Wolves beat Everton 1-0 and somehow 45,000 spectators got into a venue that held a maximum of 15,000! and two Rugby League Challenge Cup finals during the same period.
Most of those old outdoor tracks were multi-sports arenas, with cycling, athletics and even football on the infield being held at the same meeting in the same arena, something that cannot be done any more with the small tracks.
A version that is used on the Continent is the multi-use 'sportshalle', with cycle tracks in sections that can be put away when not needed and other sports or activities take over the space; we don’t really have one in this country.
In this photo from 1985 the slow erosion of the Fallowfield track means that where the surface has eroded it reveals the abrasive shale-based earlier surface.
Brighton may not seem an obvious choice for such an iconic and important velodrome, yet within the boundaries of the same town is the oldest working velodrome in the world. Preston Park is a track I only raced on once; in many ways it has only a faint resemblance to a velodrome as we know it today, but one has to remember the times when it was built when anything went regards design and layout. It is in effect four straights with banked corners, almost a road circuit, but it survives and so it should; to have survived when nearly all the old tracks have gone is an achievement in itself - it should have a preservation order on it! This not very exciting video, the only one I could find, shows exactly what it is, 577 metres long and built in 1877.
Because of its shape and size it is often used as a road circuit for short events, no self respecting trackie would ride on a track with a geared road bike and it would not normally be allowed; but Preston Park is not a normal velodrome and anything that keeps it in use is to be applauded.
After a campaign against threats to close the track because of ‘elf and safety’ concerns, funds were made available in 2015 to upgrade the track and resume normal service, and quite right too.
The south coast is home to other oddities in the world of velodromes. Just along the coast in Portsmouth, what used to be known as Alexandra Park and is now the Mountbatten centre, only has one straight and the rest is a continual curve, unique I believe in the world's velodromes; another long 537 metres. Somehow I never got to ride there.
There was also another that appears to have been erased from history in a park in Southampton. It too was a long, quite flat track with an athletic track inside it. My records on this one have also gone, though I had a success there.
An amazing-for-the-time cycle track was built on the roof of the Landmark Hotel London in 1899. This was not for competition use but for clients to use for exercise. This is one of those projects one would have loved to have a picture of, but despite endless Googling nothing has come up.
Many would believe that the computer-designed marvels that now are in all major cities worldwide were the first of their type. Not so: indoor wooden tracked velodromes were there almost from the start. The early six-day races that started in the USA were all on wooden tracks; many were able to be dismantled and used elsewhere as and when needed. Many were shoehorned into very small spaces: there was a wooden outdoor track in the beer garden of a Danish pub back in the Sixties.
When the six day races returned to London in the late Sixties a demountable track of 143 metres was used and a slightly large one a couple of years later; one of them now resides in Chalshot in Southampton.
The six day races were an enormous success both in the USA and back in Europe. Here in the UK there were six day races in Aberdeen, Bristol, Dublin, Dundee, Glasgow Leeds, York and many more venues all on wooden indoor tracks long gone. Many were never intended to be used again and were simply taken apart and the wood sold.
Six day racing spread even to Australia and some of them were held on outdoor tracks. Again, the tracks were often temporary affairs and in order to save money many had the boards across the track and lengthwise; this restricted the design as there was no curvature built into the bankings or lead-ins, making them hard work to ride.
An even earlier version of that type of track is shown in this remarkable photo of a women’s race from 1897, one of the earliest photos of cycle racing taken. Although very degraded, it shows the ladies on a track with the boards laid across the track. The picture and words come from an article in Six Day Racing; Laura Trott eat your heart out, these ladies were almost certainly at that time professional, competing for money.
The problem with wooden tracks outdoors is the obvious one of weather resistance. Even the best materials need maintenance and many simply succumbed to the elements and were dismantled never to reappear. The most obvious example I used in my original piece, the beautiful velodrome built for the 1960 Rome Olympics, died because it was not maintained, was underused and had a building defect that emerged right from the start, so it went from this:
To this:
The velodrome was eventually put out of its misery and the track sold as firewood.
As with the Rome track the velodrome built for the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh also suffered from neglect and lack of use. The difference here was they threw money at it and it hosted another Commonwealth games in’86, only for the cycle to be repeated. Outdoor wooden tracks are a luxury, they need constant maintenance which is expensive and requires specialists.
These vain glorious projects look good on paper but for the long term are not good value and fail to serve the cyclists of all levels that use them or want to use them. It is noticeable that a new tarmac velodrome with softer bankings is proposed to replace it. Assuming there is the demand for it, it will serve the area in a much more practical way and last a lot longer at a much reduced cost.
If built properly concrete makes almost as fast a track as wood anyway. When I attended the ‘83 World Championships as a spectator in Zurich, the old outdoor 333 metre Oerlikon velodrome built in 1912 had such a good surface that world records were set on it, at a time when the thinking was you had to have a wooden track for the fastest times.
The track that held the ‘72 Worlds in Leicester was tarmac, they then changed to a wood surface and again being outdoors it fell into disrepair and was finally demolished; it seems they never learn.
This 50s photo shows one of the many board tracks put up in Australia that I mentioned earlier; oh for that weather! The cheap to build tracks rarely lasted for any prolonged period and were never intended to; the cross track boards can clearly be seen in this picture.
Examples of these old oddities abound in the UK. Palmer Park in Reading had until recently a shale surface that meant you slid on the bankings if you were not careful. Even more strange was Roundhay Park in Leeds that was/is a banked grass track created in 1897; grass tracks were prevalent post war as a cheap way of track racing given the cost of hard surface velodromes and they had the advantage of being part of athletic meetings on the same surface; they were also instrumental in improving bike riding skills - racing on a flat bend on grass is not easy as it goes against the laws of physics.
And here's another Yorkshire banked grass track built in 1897 in Richmond during the cycling boom. It is very difficult to find any images or reference to these old tracks but the Richmond one features in this short video from around 1.40 and shows an important part to the golden age of cycling popularity. Incredible that something like this, just banked earth and grass, has survived for so long.
Many old tracks refuse to die. There was a little known one at Slough on what was the industrial estate, it surrounded a football pitch and was of concrete construction. I knew it well and won the season-long junior competition there in ‘58 ? I believe. Now bulldozed away it refuses to disappear as seen from this aerial photo. The curved ends of where the bankings were is still visible.
The same can be seen of the old Paddington Recreation ground track in Maida Vale;very popular, well used, it suffered from indignant residents who complained when there was a plan to upgrade the old place; from its 19th century origins, all that time, all that enjoyment to thousands who competed and watched, wiped out by NIMBYs! It was near where I worked at the time and was the first cycle track that I rode on and the one I used the most. For the big meetings illegal betting was carried on in the stand areas. The picture below is from 1940 before tiered concrete standing areas were built in the home straight. It was another of the very early tracks in this country and one that should have survived. In the photo you can see the athletics track on the inside: this was common with many of the outdoor velodromes, and meetings combining the two sports were not uncommon; one at Paddington after the 1958 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, with many of the competitors from that event, drew a huge crowd - I know, because I was there.
Slough Track still haunts:
Paddington Recreation Ground track, 1940
Yet another unusual track that looked perfectly normal was the Butts Stadium in Coventry. This had a misshapen exit from the first bend that threw you out from the inside; you soon got used to it but using it for the first time gave a weird sensation.
It was built in 1881 by local business men who saw a profit in promoting pro races with prize money, attracting riders from far afield; it even boasted a world championship. Originally this was another banked grass track, the riders in those days were not so fussy about the surface they rode on if the money was good! Later it became a shale surface and when the council took it over in 1939 it was tarmacked, as I remember it; another that was demolished in the Eighties.
Another sad sight, yet I had good memories of this place as I won my first senior race while still a junior there - I was sixteen and you were a junior then until eighteen; there were none of the other age grades in those days, e.g. schoolboy classes, under 21s etc. And it took only two events to become a national champion as a junior: the track sprint and the road race, equivalent to the 100 metres and marathon in athletics.
The same meeting saw for one of the most spectacular accidents seen in cycling: during a distance race a rider swung out too close to the outside barriers that consisted of horizontal boards nailed to posts, but there was a gap between the boards and the rider actually got his pedal between them and was catapulted what looked like twenty feet straight up in the air still holding his handlebars which had been wrenched from the bike. He landed on his back with such a bang I thought he was dead, the noise could be heard across the stadium, yet after everyone rushed to his aid he got up and walked away; just sometimes, someone smiles on you.
London had many cycle tracks during that golden age, but by the post war period they were reduced to just two, and two of the oldest at that: Paddington as above, and Herne Hill in Dulwich South London - like Paddington it was well used and its Good Friday meet attracted riders from all over the world. Herne Hill was threatened with closure when its lease ran out but petitions, fund raising and a lot of work by activists saved the old girl and she is now refurbished and serving the track cycling community again.
One other track survived for decades: the White City velodrome used for the 1908 Olympics. Herne Hill was used for the 1948 games, fell into disuse but remained under the stands built for the greyhound track that followed and was still there when the place was bulldozed and built on.
The 1908 games suffered from appalling weather and whereas today events on a track in inclement weather would be halted for safety reasons, in 1908 they went ahead. The photo below shows the finish of a distance race in pouring rain, something today you just would not see.
It is often thought that cycling racing was started on the European mainland; that is not true and the first official bicycle race that was held in France was won by a Brit. There was a long drought in success until more recent times though we have always had world champions, just a bit thinner on the ground until present times.
Abroad, I did visit when it still was a velodrome the specialist track at Wuppertal in Germany when riding over there in a representative competition. It was built for motor paced racing, very popular in Germany in earlier days: this was racing behind what are known as the big motors - not the Derny/moped affairs still going today, they were normally 1000cc Jap-engined specialist motorbikes with belt drive for smoothness and a roller behind the rear wheel so the rider could close up in the slipstream.
The speed these riders got up to dictated the design of the track and Wuppertal as can just be seen in this old photo had in effect two tracks; the banking had a steeper upper level for the motor paced events. If there were any other tracks built this way I never heard of them but during the early days when motor paced racing was popular I expect somewhere there was something similar.
Part of the old Wuppertal track survived as a terrace for the local football club for many years and then even that went when they rebuilt the stadium.
In Scotland Celtic Park, home to the eponymous football club, had a cycle track round the outside of the football pitch when the new ground was built in 1892. Even in Scotland the popularity of track racing during that period could not be ignored.
Another famous or infamous velodrome was the Vel D’Hiv in Paris. Its illustrious history was stained forever when Jacques Goddet, director of the ASO, Amaury Sports Association which also ran the TDF, from 1936 to 1986, was responsible for the Paris velodrome into which 8,000 Jews were herded by French police acting on Nazi orders. Goddet handed over the keys of the velodrome, the Vel D’Hiv, to the French police, although the exact circumstances under which he did so are unknown. The French Police only revealed papers showing the extent of their collaboration in 2012! The track was demolished in 1959; the track itself could not obviously be blamed for anything to do with what happened but its association lived long after the event.
We don’t have many velodromes even today in this country. Those old reminders that still exist from that golden age should be cherished, they are a reminder of our Victorian position in the world when anything was possible and the early cycle tracks were part of that.
In an age when everything has to conform it is refreshing to see nonconformity enduring. The day when everything is exactly the same will mean we have lost something never likely to return.
