The lone voice, citing the BBC (caveat everything), bewails the forthcoming banning (de facto if not de jure) of sea-angling:
‘The European Union now wants to bring anglers into the quota system. Commercial fishermen, of course, are already subject to strict quotas limiting the number of fish they can take from the sea. But, at the moment, people who fish for pleasure are free to take home whatever they catch.’
Free of quotas, free of taxes, free of regulations, free of some EU quango overseeing them, free of fines for breaking all the new EU regulations. This must stop! Anyone would think we are living in a democracy or something.
We’re not, and one of the regular features of totalitarian states is that eventually they have to stop people leaving; first they have to stop them with leaving with any of their assets, and then stop them leaving at all.
We are a maritime nation and anyone as salty as we are would naturally think of a boat as a way out. The sort often used by sea-anglers, perhaps.
Coincidence? Hardly.
I think it unikely that a boat “of the sort often used by sea-anglers” would be any use whatever as a way out of the EU.
After all, where would you go? Canada? In a small open launch? Oh yeah, that would work.
I have a better idea: continue to fish as you always have, but be sure to eat the catch before returning to your mooring or whatever.
Well, there is always that. I did say it was a conspiracy theory. Not to be taken seriously.
Anyway, people have escaped from totalitarianism in small boats; I remember reading something about this occurring during WWII. Of course it wouldn’t help us much to throw ourselves upon the tender mercies of the Fourth Reich. Canada it would have to be. Subsisting, no doubt, during the passage, on fish…
Oh, Canada….
Here are some links I’ve just hooked together, to an old documentary video which includes a long scenic bit about the Canadian Pacific RR….
http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/indias-dhr-and-other-railroading-wonders/
Can’t watch videos. Took the Flash player off to prevent the computer from being taxed as a TV set. I don’t expect you to believe any of this, because you come from a nominally civilised country, but it happens to be true. Perhaps post more pictures; I can see those.
I noticed your picture of the Allegheny-type Virginian Blue Ridge 2-6-6-6 locomotive. Notwithstanding that I don’t really do locomotives, I did wonder about this remarkable vehicle, which appears from the photo to have four sets of triple-expansion cylinders and a boiler the size of an oil refinery component.
What occurred to me as a pragmatical Brit was: what is in the (albeit sizeable) tender by way of fuel (coal? wood? oil, even?) and water, and how far could the loco travel without refilling it? Was there any machine feed mechanism for the firebox; if not, how many stokers were employed? Or was the design somehow a triumph of expansive working and fuel economy?
Hi, luc, I’ve noticed before in your stuff that the The Bastards tax your PC like Tee Vee if the pictures actually wiggle around…Jesus Christ. All I can say, though, is “civilised, er, civilized, my butt!” All that has happened is THESE turds around here haven’t figured out THIS scam, not yet anyway.
Here are a couple of links that will let you look up more about the Allegheny class engines. The UP “Big Boys” was bigger as to weight, but these girls had the maximum tractive power:
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/
http://www.railarchive.net/index.html
Details of the comparisons are at the following:
(http://www.jvmrr.org/engines/engines.html#big_boy
I honestly don’t know if the Allegheny-class engines were augur-fired or not. I expect that they were, just on size — but, you know, these God-damn augurs break too, as I well know from my farming days and THEN you have a Hell of a time on your hands — especially at seventy or 125 miles per. (Down in Indiana and Illinois on the prairie they used to run to beat Hell.) Richard Dietz in his memoir published a few years back, /Firing On The Pennsy/, about the years he worked for the PRR from 1943-7 as a fireman, writes about shoveling away to beat the band then!
They haven’t started taxing computers and cellphones as TVs here yet, but they certainly will; forewarned is forearmed.
Thanks for the links. Wikipedia’s rather short article doesn’t make clear the firing method, but does mention, in connection with a crown-sheet failure, that there were three people on the footplate; I would assume these to be engineer (UK: driver) and two firemen.
Thanks, I’ll look this one up — the last I looked it was just the train driver…and Mr Toad in his washerwoman’s hijab, flinging coals onto the grate!