Party Vibe

This has already happened to me since devolution, I’ve already had several shipments of bicycle components from Edinburgh delayed by an extra day and routed via Mount Pleasant GPO HQ London, which is a strange way to direct a parcel to Ipswich unless the intention is to thoroughly inspect it. These contained nothing more sinister than French cloth tape (like high quality gaffer tape but thinner) used to line the rim of a wheel (so the tube does not burst when inflated to 7 bar and rub against sharp holes the spokes are put through), and a set of brake pads, cables and associated bits. In fact one went missing completely, and they ended up sending them from Leeds, where everything arrived the next day. That was some years ago when I still rode a traditional push bike instead of my current e-bike.

I reluctantly ended from this bike shop (a very successful) workers co-operative up switching to English suppliers (one SW England and another near where Daftfader lives), although I did get a special issue red cycling jacket from them (it is not easy to get this jacket in red, I have only even seen one other chap wearing one in Suffolk and I can’t deny I was a bit disappointed (like girls are) when I noticed this. Indeed I will wear this jacket tonight as I’m going to the housing co-op party and the weather is slowly changing to the point where its time to put one on.

They could then set up a factory making high quality multi language keyboards and sell them across North Europe 😉

@Pat McDonald 556938 wrote:

The SNP haven’t even applied to join yet – they assume they’re already in it (which is true while they are part of the UK but ISN’T true if they leave). They haven’t actually paid attention to how much it will cost (I mean, small country, rich in gas and oil, low population… bet the Brussels gravy train are loving the idea).

that is true, but Scotland is in many respects not unlike many smaller countries that have already joined the EU (or Norway that isn’t an EU member but is still European for trade agreements, tech standards etc), Scotland in any case is more financially stable than many current EU countries, England will still be dependent on its electricity, and Scotland has to pay England for the use of a lot of UK-wide public services. EU membership isn’t that big a problem (countries in Europe have been splitting since the 1990s (more recently without havving a war) but things like changing over the telephone numbers, internet domain, radio callsigns etc do cost a fair bit, as a lot of other nations have learned.

Also much of the “English high tech” which isn’t sensitive military stuff has already been shifted from Scotland to Chinese dominated areas of Malaysia (such as Penang) in recent times (along with many of the Scottish folk from these companies). This has gone on for decades though, consider that I inherited from my late father an entire collection of gramophone records of bagpipe reels…

I think its far more likely that devolution (the current scale of which is often underestimated) will be increased rather than full independence, but there are also lot of folk in East Anglia who would gladly welcome all the stuff at Faslane and the MOD research being moved to somewhere like Lowestoft, to compensate for the Americans slowly reducing their investment in aerodromes here.). It would however mean that everyone has to be very careful or a large part of East Anglia could end up in ashes (as much from a mistake here or local sabotage as Mr Putin deciding to bomb us), which is why the whole lot was shifted to Scotland in the first place around the same time Sizewell and Bradwell were built. (that wouldn’t even be the first time, Stowmarket was blown up in the 19th century when it went tits up at a military ordnance factory).

i didn’t know about the Stowmarket guncotton explosion (even though a particularly bad poem was written about it). until I moved here. This area is large by English standards, sparsely populated and flat which is why a lot of defence/aerospace stuff was put here, it is a good place for aerodromes and transmitting or receiving radio signals.

combined US/RAF comms position (look at the top, there is a Post Office line switch amongst all the US Autovon kit) which is just down the road from me (now a Cold War museum).

George Orwell (or Eric Arthur Blair), his correct name grew up in South Oxon (which also has a lot of aerospace/defence history) and his family later moved to Suffolk…

American electronics (both military and consumer) certainly wasn’t made for recycling – they were the first “throw away society” in the early 20th century – the feds actually had to pass regulations against some US electronics companies after they were found to have deliberately engineered a component used in a television set to fail after a certain amount of time (in the 1960s when these were high price items). ironically this is another reason that comms position would have survived – the Yanks didn’t want it back (they did recover a lot of the AUTOVON switch as the US telephone companies wanted the circuit boards as they were the same used in civillan exchanges and the Internet was just being opened up to the public which would increase PSTN traffic (no broadband yet!))

Someone was willing to pay more for it than the scrap man, and few British hobbyists/collectors would want the US handsets, dial etc (they are all different standards and if used on a European phone system with European network arrangements won’t work and/or sound rough) .

However until the mid 1990s a British switchboard would have been recovered by the PO/BT and either re-used or picked apart and the components reallocated – people(usually older folk with more time) also collect and restore these. The big manual ones from the emergency comms systems are only just appearing on ebay as they were classed as “current equipment” until the early 2000s!

US stuff looks impressive but is often made using cheaper components and less reliable. The reason that Post Office switch is there is the PO/BT would have insisted if any of it was connected to Blighty’s network it must go through local protection equipment and an isolating transformer (my high school had a US sourced modem once and that it had a unique circuit provided had a similar switch). Americans have a habit of skimping on power supply components and random voltage or the full mains (which a duff PSU could end up putting out) is not desirable to send down telephone lines especially in a 230V country (there are some rednecks across the pond who have used telecoms and structured cabling for 110V power as the cable is rated for this because of ringing current and higher voltage DC supplies sometimes used but its strongly discouraged and illegal in some states)

I’ve been advised by reliable sources that BT had their own room in that building separate from all the US stuff, and when it closed down in the early 90s they recovered anything worth having (such ISDN as NTEs which were then more costly and worth reusing for other provisions (related to the above, this had a -120V DC supply from the exchange which would bite if you found it on a block terminal)

Today they use a cheap China one which seems to just use standard -50V DC and leave it on the wall when the circuit ceases.

Even in earlier years large metal stuff was recovered for scrap metal and much smaller WW II era comms kit (and much cold war stuff) that didn’t get taken apart and re-used by the Post Office for civillian public sector projects just had the sensitive bits (like the quartz crystal) removed, and the rest sold off to surplus stores from the 1960s onwards. Much of it was still turning up until the late 1990s, until defence budget cuts and advances in technology meant that a lot of stuff is now off the shelf commercial equipment.

hobby electronic magazines of that era (there are a fair few online) are full of ads for ex UK defence stuff and the hobbyists of that era (who were often themselves ex-HM Forces) used the bits to build their amateur radio kit or to make hi fi equipment out of, using designs by the same boffins who had designed all the defence electronics but actually preferred peace.

This time round they gave away the copyright to the designs (which they could have sold to Philips, Telefunken or Sony for loads of cash) and encouraged the Germans to build them as well and see if they could improve on things. They too had access to lots of components, but usually the first thing to do was to fetch the bottle of benzine, or even carbon tetrachloride and remove the swastika from any ex-military issue ones, (as there were and are still active searches for suspected war criminals and/or issues in many areas with extreme right sympathisers).

In some cases even a file fille or glasspaper was required if the mark had been embossed on the item. Usually the Germans found ways of making robust power supplies and keeping unwanted frequencies out of the amp (and stopping it accidentally radiating these as well) but had to admit the British design was particuarly good for audio performance.