Sunday 6 December 2015

NO GRASP OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE, HUH?


I'd have brought you the scoffing tweet from the Noble Baron ffoukes, but much to my delight and indeed pride, his magnificence, the old duffer, has gone and blocked me on Twitter. Must be something I said about Labour aristocrats being ever so slightly oxymoronic. 
He's a snappy dresser is George. Look how his tie goes with his nose.
I believe that Scottish Labour's answer to Einstein, James Kelly, also had fun mocking the new crossing. He called it an SNP vanity project, and Elaine Murray said that the case for the bridge was overblown, was sucking up a great deal of money and had only been built so that the SNP had something they could show that they delivered.

Of course engineers had been saying for a long time that the bridge was doing far more work and carrying far more weight daily than had ever been envisaged when it was built in 1964.

Turns out that the engineers were right and the combined wisdom of his Baronness (as opposed to baroness), Mr Kelly, Ms Murray and Mr Hothersall, were wrong. I suspect that, had we had a Labour government when the first problems of the bridge came to light, we would now be looking at a very different picture for the economy of Edinburgh and Fife.

47 comments:

  1. LOL... So, the auld goat blocked you? You terrible cybernat troll.
    Nice one, Tris
    Dx

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    1. For some reason it appears that he doesn't like me, D...

      Imagine that!

      Oh well, one less Christmas card...

      Delete
  2. All the jokes on twitter about Fife being cut off are hilarious the trains being loaded to the roofs, pictures of the last helicopter out of Saigon,etc but they forget, we've got Amazon, merry Christmas.
    jdman

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    1. Have yourself a merry little christmas, Edinburgh?

      Delete
  3. Hothersall, Foulkes, Murray and Kelly were all talking b****x.

    It was common knowledge, that the cables on the bridge were deteriorating at an accelerated rate, due to an invasive inspection technique.

    Holes were drilled in the outer sheathings, of the main cables, to inspect the inner cable bundles. The bundles were fine but, by drilling through the protective sheathing. They inadvertently exposed the inner bundles to salty moist air, thus the cables rapidly began to rust and lose their integrity; hence the need for a new bridge.

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    1. Clearly the above mentioned don't have your engineering understanding.

      Or.... maybe they just saw an opportunity to say SNP BAAAAAD, and grabbed it with both hands.

      If they could just come up with one policy... just one would do... then maybe they wouldn't have to keep resorting to their only answer.

      They remind me of the sheep in Animal Farm

      Delete
    2. Tariff Advertiser has a good timeline, of mismanagement, in his blog.

      http://tarffadvertiser.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-bridge-bron-broen-time-line.html?showComment=1449509141913#c8295534029779963582

      Delete
  4. Wonder if Baron FFSakes nose is suffering the effects of his heavy alcohol consumption?

    Rhinophyma??

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    1. Goodness. Never let it be said that Lord Grenmor... I mean ffoulkes was a man who liked a wee tipple before he danced with old ladies.

      Delete
  5. I think Drunken Borstal is long term asset of the SNP.

    He, like the Clap, is the gift that just goes on giving.

    He'll be in the House of Lords soon.

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    1. I notice that Mr Cameron is about to make the House of Lords less powerful, no bad thing in itself.

      But I wonder if people will pay quite as much to get in there when all they get to do is decide what kind of vintage champagne they are going to have the taxpayer subsidise for them.

      That said, in fairness to them, it was they who saw the fact that Fluffy's Scotland Bill was incompetent financially. So maybe they are not so bad after all.

      Delete
  6. It seems that the problems with the bridge go way back, as far as pre Holyrood days.

    http://www.thenational.scot/comment/letters-to-the-national-december-5-a-lack-of-foresight-by-politicians-led-to-forth-road-bridge-woes.10803

    Why was it only when SNP came to power that anything was done about it?

    Surely the pre-SNP governments could have used the spare money they returned to Westminster for a new bridge. It would have been done by now - oh but that was not SNP, so maybe it wouldn't.

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    1. Remember joke McConnel sent back to the Treasury £1.5 million he could find a way to spend. Mind you Labour had originally proposed on of the private construction and leasing deals before they walked away. How was the Skye Bridge financed by the Tories?

      Delete
    2. Good article BJS.

      I just read the article over at Wings. It appears that mr Darling was dead set against the bridge.

      Better Together... uh huh!

      Delete
    3. Wasn't it billion... several years running too, Panda?

      Bridges aside, it is beyond belief that Labour and the Libdems thought that there was nothing that they could spend that money on that would benefit Scots.

      Amazingly the health service and education were just perfect, the roads and policing needed no more money, the prisons were fine...

      Delete
  7. Your online history can catch up with you at times.

    Tris- can you take off the same comment put on the wrong thread.

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    1. Sure Marcia.

      Yes... whatever you say on Twitter can come back and bite you (if you're important enough for anyone to note your posts).

      Delete
  8. Bwahahaha! Good find.

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  9. That's a really scary photo of Mr Magoo.

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    1. Have you ever photograph of him that wasn't, Dan?

      Delete
  10. Having read and digested reams of technical data regarding the Forth bridge going back as far 1997, I have concluded that Hothersall would struggle at being a doorstop.

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    1. Not an unreasonable conclusion to reach given his very obvious lack of understanding of the problems.

      Delete
  11. tris and his pals ???? maybe !

    Not content with building Castles in Air over Independence
    you now replace them with Bridges ........


    ALL I can say to you about Bridges is.

    You aint no bridge builder Bruv !


    You see wot i did there eh...Brill

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    1. All I can say is ... you stun me bruv.

      Delete
    2. tris

      Its Good un eh me old mucker

      wot would be the Gaelic equivalent ?
      I mean it plays into the cheerful cockanee sparraw touch
      me old forelock begging yer pardon guvnor .
      down the old smoke good old loyal patriotic London .

      And thats why the right wing Media have jumped on it .

      Delete
    3. mind if they wanted to reflect the present day London
      and not a representation of London during the Blitz
      (do the kids know what that was ? )

      Then it would be

      nie jesteś muzułmaninem brat

      in Polish

      Delete
    4. Niko the bridgebuilder, Conan? That takes imagination.

      Delete
    5. You'll have to ask John about the Gaelic for that Niko...

      I've not been to London for years. I dunno what it's like now. But yeah, probably full of Polish plumbers.

      No place for a classicist like you, Niko

      Non es pontem Bruv

      Delete
    6. Sibh gun drochaidch neach-togalach bràthair.

      In very rough Gaelic, apologies to John.

      Delete
    7. tris

      I went London during Parliament recess and had wander around
      the house of commons what surprised me was how small the actual
      debating chamber is....
      I stood in the very spot where William Wallace was fitted up
      by the English crown back in the day

      Delete
    8. I'm impressed Jim

      Delete
    9. My mum took me many years ago. We went into the Commons. I don;t remember it being that small, but it was a long time ago. They were debating something to do with open cast mining in the North East... yawn... and there were only about 6 people there.

      Then we went into the Lords and they were debating something of every bit as much interest. Again there were very few there and most of them looked asleep.

      I was a bit disappointed to be honest.

      Delete
  12. tris
    u read this you should....conan need not to he wuz there

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/07/shrewsbury-trials-1970s-trade-unionists-ricky-tomlinson-edward-heath




    the revelations that the Heath government in 1974 influenced the content and timing of an anti-union TV documentary – and may have influenced a jury – will not exactly surprise union veterans from that time. The “Shrewsbury trials” became infamous for the use of conspiracy charges against trade union militants. Des Warren, now deceased, and Ricky Tomlinson – still very much alive as a renowned actor – were jailed for conspiracy to intimidate, unlawful assembly and affray, following altercations at a construction site in Shrewsbury two years before.

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    1. Heath seemed to a youthful me like a decent bloke. Of course, he wasn't. He only seemed that way because he made himself such a pan in the butt to Mrs Thatcher.

      Quite apart from stories about his private life that we all read, he was a useless prime minister and wasted endless amounts of money on rearranging things to be exactly the same all over the UK... then they had to be changed again. One nation nonsense.

      I'll go and read that Niko.

      Delete
  13. I passed Foulkes in Westminster, or rather he passed me, as he scuffled along in his anorak.
    I realised ,once again, how those, like Foulkes, hide behind their titles, and their distortions are amplified by the media in newspaper columns and TV studio, along with their 'importance'.
    Someone like William Wilberforce, judging by the drawings and paintings of him, probably also scuffled along, half blind in middle age, bent over. But that after spending 30 years of constant campaigning, and personally writing every letter of persuasion, to end slavery.

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    1. I wonder, Brain, what the Noble Baron Georgie has been doing for 30 years. Oh yeah, asking old ladies for dances and falling over...

      He's not exactly in the Wilberforce league. We learned about Wilberforce at school. There was never a mention of the Gracious and Noble Aristocratic George....

      Delete
  14. They closed the bridge to punish Edinburgh for voting in a Labour MP. Tsk tsk these nasty people.

    And punishing people across the water for being Fifers, which seems fair enough......


    zog

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    Replies
    1. They are just Baaaaaaaaad, Baaaaaaaaad, I tell ye.

      Delete
  15. Tris

    Is Hothersall still on the go, he blocked me a couple of years ago for not being able to ever win an argument, he is such a plank. Foukes is an entitled twat in my opinion, it's hard to imagine anyone voting for these people, well not Hothersall, he's lost every election he has forced himself upon. Still never let the truth get in the way of the lies and the SNP mantra.

    Bruce

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    1. Yep, Bruce. Hothersall is still part of the Labour commentariat. I've no idea why either. I don't think I've ever commented on anything he's said so he's never had a chance to block me. I suspect I'm not important enough!

      But I am extremely flattered that the good lord has blocked me. Along with Curran, I consider that to be an achievement.

      Delete
  16. Morning Tris, sorry a wee bit late on this I fear. Being an Portobello Lass whose only trips to Fife were Sunday School picnics across the Forth Rail Bridge to Pittencrieff Park so I cannot call myself a Fifer even yet having only been here a mere 12 years. The Bridge should have been planned and replaced way back in the 90's but the the Scottish Office changed their minds (they have one) and ended up having to pay the company a mere £200 million for cancelling so they could spend it on something else.
    Now we are where we are, our little road along to the roundabout in Clackmannashire is chocked, our own wee bridge in Carnock is holding up so far but pleased to see that they are diverting the lorries now along the lower road.
    We here in Fife will survive in fact I am sure the shops in Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy might decide to make it an annual event.

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    1. It's an ill wind ... as they say.

      Labour has at least been consistent on the bridge. They criticised teh Tories when they were going to replace it, and then the SNP when they did replace it.

      It does make you grateful that they weren't in power, otherwise we'd be looking at having a damaged bridge with no hope of replacement for maybe 8 years...

      Delete
  17. Panda. The labour accounting unit Scotland handed back £1.5 billion. It wisnae wan an a hauf million.
    wullie

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  18. Did I type millions? Bugger. difficult to type wae 4 pays each with 6 rudimentary fingers. Very confusing.

    Taa.

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    1. Tous ces bons vins don't help typing either!

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