[Richard]

I have not had many e-mails on any of any of my accounts but the phone is getting a real pasting this for the last two weeks. Clearly ‘Microsoft’ (Bombay criminals section?) and BT (same group) have staff with nothing to do except to ring up to get an earful.

[Richard]

Keith, to clarify what I was saying I was referring to the cases which go foul because of non disclosure of material facts. I am also aware that the police, (do nothing in too many reported cases) or the Criminal Protection Service, also known as the CPS have a lot to answer for, with too many reported cases not followed through or not followed through correctly. It is no wonder that far too many have no faith whatsoever in what passes for a very broken ‘system’.

I am not fully convinced that rape should really be such a special criminal pathway item; it is assault with a weapon and intent, without being too graphic.

Does breaking it out to its own special pathway work for or against likely success?

Currently the record is self damning.

[Richard]

Bob, thank you that was a great way to get some mirth and raised spirits after a number of ‘difficult days’. SWMBO is back on another round of chemo two weeks on and two weeks off and tablets every 12 hours, it is a really hard schedule. Since I am up perhaps 4 to 6 times a night anyway, days that start at 5:30 a.m. can be a challenge. We were at the local hospital until 1:o a.m. on Thursday due to a reaction to an infusion that goes with the chemo, up again bright and early to deal with the dogs , breakfast, her chemo and then go to a funeral of someone who had died from cancer before rinsing and repeating for the evening. The funeral was very well attended with people having come from far and wide, some well over 200 miles away. He was clearly well respected in the clubs and societies he had joined supported and served. As a result many turned out with their full dress regalia and sang and prayed round the burial, I did not have the nerve to film it, it felt a bit too personal and in a way sacred, though the sight of 40 or 50 people forming a ring round a grave praying, reading and singing hymns was hardly a secret event. I am not sure that grave yard had seen the likes of the event for many a long year, if ever. I have some lingering regrets at not having a copy for my wife our daughter myself and for his widow.

You are a damned good writer of your tales so a warm, rich thank you. I feel I needed that story and it was very well told. I just hope you are going as well with your treatments as you are with you yarns.

[Richard]

I saw the report and was aware of a number of such recent cases. They had been widely reported after cases went to court and rather damning evidence of prior contacts only came to light in the middle of the trial so wasted everyone’s time.

I can understand the concern being vocally and loudly expressed by some claiming that surrendering the phone could put some off. I balance that by feeling that going to court and then being found out would be a far worse problem.

I am aware that some ‘under age’ cases come about because (1) a parent finds something out, (2) a participant has a later attack of cold feet or (3) earned a ‘name’ for themselves amongst their peers. (I know one case where the jealous parent reported such a case, the couple have been a married husband and wife couple for many years.)

On balance, if there is not full disclosure before the start of a criminal case, something emerging that should have had a material impact can only cause severe outcomes when it does see the light of day.

Keith, I agree with you, however weak or bad a subject, you can always find someone ready to distort the facts and bellyache on antisocial media – I include the press, radio and TV within that epithet.

[Richard]

Dave, bolt on after market security does not yet have a price for such an accessory. I have seen and heard this sort of thing too often in the past, we will worry about security/QOS/ customer quality concerns after we get it to undercut the other people in the market and mop up the money. Only then we will mop up the mess of the crap products.

At least two of what were once major enterprises run on those lines are no longer running.

[Richard]

Yes Les that is why I called it non exclusive as I am a member. I to built a crystal set later replaced by a ‘transistor set’ built from a ‘Henry Radio’ kit. Then a amplifier kit I bought from a local outlet to boost the performance via a transistor amp failed to include the required transistor… some further shopping located a suitable item. I used that one illicitly to listen to the launch one of the early orbiting satellites. It could perhaps have been Telstar?

[Richard]

The ‘club’ of those who remember Horace has non exclusive membership, after all I am in that group.

[Richard]

That is great news, the very last thing you want is to end up having to deal with the ‘Court of Abuse’. They self title themselves as the ‘Court of Protection’ and while they might sometimes try to protect their own backsides after the harm has been done; protecting the best interests of clients was very far from their often totally obstructive, unhelpful minds. They were a cost centre and of no practical help at all . PM the steps that have been taken should help keep them from your doorstep.

As an example of the sort of things that can happen in the mid stages of dementia, take the example of my mother. She was in her mid to later 80s and still more of less able to walk short distances. One day she spied a police car stopped near a neighbour’s house. Surprisingly soon after she was out in slippers and night dress demand help to find her missing parents – they were obviously both long deceased. After that things continued downhill and not too long after she was in a home and more or less permanently bed ridden, though she was craned out into a chair and taken to the lounge.

Because long distant memories appear more relevant than yesterday’s events the burning desire to return to somewhere people once knew becomes a very serious issue. Couple that to the fact that things they remember enjoying in the past and now find they cannot do and it is easier to understand how they can become seriously angry and frustrated. Ceramics can take a pasting at such times, its a shame when Troika wares get reduced to dusty fragments.

Happily it does not happen in all cases, the ‘ignorant but happy’ phase can last for many.

Happily PM it does sound as though your situation is very well set up to cope. I trust that this robustly founded arrangement will stand all in good stead.

For some others it is a possible warning of what may come and thus to be ready to manage a way through the result.

[Richard]

Ed, you are right on the money there with all points. It is not a good week at the moment, two appointments down for my wife and a third to go within two hours and a monumental issue with a housing cock-up crew affecting my disabled daughter. That is enough for the moment but PM Ed is right there with both points covering what I needed to say.

[Richard]

Les, you have probably seen the effects of narrowing down career choices too early and the inbuilt attitudes to work that can build up. While overseas I saw the effects of two types of employee evolution. One ‘classically developed’ through work and learning what was needed, the others through theoretically based training. One faced with a fault could carry out a mental triage and rapidly located the problem area. The other pulled the manual, started as page 1 and went through all of the pages checking totally irrelevant aspects before arriving close to the problem area and wondering what to do. Guess which one made the better technical staff?

[Richard]

PlaneMan wrote:

Thanks for the replies. Ryan, he doesn’t wander when he’s at home. He won’t go out unless prompted by someone.

While that is currently a ‘happy state’ for now, it may not remain that way and the change can happen quickly, almost overnight – or even in the middle of the night when dressed for bed. Whatever the weather conditions and how suitable the attire. That is the dangerous phase ,when even the most mild mannered person can become uncontrollable if they cannot chase whatever demon they were after when the desire to move takes over.

[Richard]

There is always a balance to be achieved and probably no one does it very well. The FAA are, by now probably either stuffed with Trump’s yes bozo’s or others who just want to keep their heads down anyway. The French are limited by their civil service training and cultural development straight jackets. Our lot well I was briefly a civil servant in the 1960s. Many systems were clearly designed to suit a particular type of mind, no initiative and no room for doubt, add entry (a) to entry (b) calculate (c) multiply by (d) and hit with stamp (e). Ideal for low grade clerks which were employed in their thousands. It could go wrong when the constant (d) turned out to have wider variation than any of the supposed variables but that was another story. Still the inky finger brigade did not get on too well with the oily finger lot that actually did things and as for the messy wellington lot (e.g. farmers) they were beyond the pale. Just ask Blair’s wife what she thought about the UK countryside.

So there were walls but it had benefits as long as it lasted, the messy hand brigade got on and did what they did best, fixing real things, investigating real problems and discovering essential things.

I am not sure, are the crash investigation lot (a) still in existence and (b) are they still filled with skilled technical staff or have they been replaced by EU mandated dubious experts who never do field work, ‘too messy by half” for them? As I said elsewhere they were well above the usual run of ‘experts’ and very skilled at their chosen field of work.

[Richard]

Thanks JCD, the link showed how Harold W also had a finger in the failure pie of the UK computer industry. Though whether it failed because of its own internal problems or was pushed is a hotly debated question, but fail it did.

[Richard]

Les, most of the developments and improvements came from a mix of either private companies or key workers on their own or within those companies. When was the last time the world wanted leading technologies produced by the civil service?

As for the abandonment of/attempts to destroy the air industry by Harold W the least said about that the better. Perhaps he saw more votes in dying efforts like coal mining and riveted shipbuilding?

Winston’s desire to keep the computerisation part of code breaking hidden might more easily be understood when you realise that the enigma code machines were being used post war by communist states who were unaware that the codes had been broken and messages still could be decoded. A fact of which the other side were not thought to be aware. Some of the expertise was still employed or tried to be employed, the Lyons Corner shop chain with their LEO ordering system was a key deployment and highly successful in its niche. Several other projects were also considered ground breaking at the time in the early 1950s. Elliot Automation dabbled in early CAD/CAM work for machine automation, but those and other efforts came to nought or nowt or more accurately buried in a hill of retribution and shattered dreams. I knew someone who spent more than a year trying to debug programmes on paper while waiting for the computers to be delivered. He gave up and became a soon to be very disillusioned teacher, further blunted by the birth of a disabled child for whom he had to move to another location seeking help for her training and development.

[Richard]

Thank you Bob for the amplification and clarification. What a truly ‘bloody’ difference, one no deaths, just a reminder to the person in charge to take charge, the other left nothing for the undertaker. I wonder which one got it right, wow a really hard question for some to follow.

[Richard]

I share your lack of enthusiasm for the way this has been handled. While the bitey dog might be useful, I am not totally sure I feel comfortable with him as the pilot and the real thing relegated to a watch and fail role as they have now become. Certification should be governed by one set of rules for all, not one for (a) ‘nothing really required’ and one for the rest ‘do everything again and then get recertified’.

Note, (a) appears to be Boeing as the blue eyed one at the moment.

[Richard]

If you have ever had any manual handling training or seen the manual handling videos this will not have been a complete surprise. The careful shaping of the ‘stones’ to allow them to create a finished structure was of course selling a feature for the cement industry, but none the worse for that. For me it was rolling large oil drums, or walking packing cases was enough, 25 tons would have caused me a little too much excitement!

[Richard]

Ed P wrote:

Of interest the FAA has just issued a grounding order to a make of small executive jets (Cirrus Vision) for similar Boeing type reasons. link

That was probably tripped by the realisation that Boeing caused an issue, the link insists on the acceptance of all cookies – including its advertising related ones, so I did not go through with reading the post. I accept your comment about it though.

I suspect a bit of cleaning out of some messy stables by the FAA!

[Richard]

Bob, there were several themes that have emerged, the on the cheap use of a single and demonstratively unreliable source of guidance information to the compulsory crash causing MCAS system. That the new nacelle design causes a further unstable source of lift in addition to the thrust centre changes, etc. is held by those on the ‘unhappy side’ to believe that the crate is almost uncontrollable by a human pilot and given the limitations of the presently available generation of computer assistance system uncontrollable by software either. Ed has enumerated various ways that software supported ‘machines’ need to have error sources met and constrained to avoid fatal outcomes, signal noise being a major issue, single point of failure being another. I have not aeronautical operational experience, but every time that single points of failure were mitigated in my spheres of activity, the publicly apparent service failures vanished. Nothing was noticed and no one died, contrast that with the 737 MAX.

The most worrying aspect for me is the disclosure that the lift characteristics resulting from the new design change is highly unstable, being subject to various variables, such as speed and angle of attack. Spoilers can sometimes mask the effects of lift generation, but having the lift component continuously changing sounds like a whole new set of challenges summed up as instability. To have avoided a need for certification when making such gross destabilising changes to the old plane design still sounds horribly unwise to me.

Thank you I would rather not travel at all rather than face unstable design failure and if I must travel I’d rather walk or drive.

[Richard]

Very thought provoking and sobering. I never expect to risk using a 737 MAX, – or for that matter any other aircraft, but for other machines that is for very different reasons.

[Author]

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