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#1: Sal Mineo.
Appeared with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.
Wiki says he was also the model for a naked picture. But that’s OK because it’s great art and hangs in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
#5: Tide is a very great and historic detergent. First marketed by Procter and Gamble in the USA in 1946. In 2006, the American Chemical Society designated the development of Tide to be a National Historic Chemical Landmark, in recognition of its significance as the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent.
Wiki: Although there was a synthetic detergent as early as 1907, “the detergent business was further revolutionized with the discovery of the alkylbenzene sulfonates, which, when combined with the use of chemical “builders”, made machine washing with hard water possible.This presented Procter and Gamble with the opportunity to create a product such as Tide.”
Soap powders just didn’t cut it with hard water and washing machines.
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There’s probably a very thin line between great art and porn, Danny!
I seem to recall that soap and hard water = a horrible scum…
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I think if they hang in museums, naked pictures are art not porn. 😉
Yes, here in the Midwest USA we have very hard water. Soap powders made terrible scum in washing machines.
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I knew there was a distinction, Danny.
When I’ve been in areas with hard water, I hate taking a bath. Scum floating on the top of the water ….yuk.
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Calcium Stearate (Spelling??) if I remember my secondary chemistry correctly.
Late 50s/early 60s that was. In those days, we talked about Acetic Acid.
In the late 80s/early 90s, I discovered it was now known as Ethanoic Acid, so I could very well be wrong in modern parlance.
As too often proves to be the case these days. Comes with the territory I suppose.
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Calcium and magnesium stearate. If you have any pills or capsules handy, have a look at the excipients – they’re used as bulking agents or something. [(Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and eagle-eyed young person, upon observing the ramshackle pile of decreptitude and embarrassing ailments that is his grandfather ingesting his anti-depressants, heart medication, painkillers on list of restricted drugs, cholesterol-lowering medication, beta-blockers, mood stabilisers, medications for lowering blood glucose, ACE inhibitors and prophylactic aspirin which he consumes for tiffin, and on the lookout for M&Ms or Smarties) “What’s that you’re eating, grandad?” “Oh nothing, my boy, just soap scum”].
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Found an illustration – not of soap scum. The painting for which Sal Mineo was the model, “The New Adam”, though how you paint some other guy as a “homage to [your]” lover is beyond me. Here’s the article: https://is.gd/LFhgce.
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Did they not have a wall big enough to get it on without going round the corner?
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Yeah; as it happens, I have a bit of a crease in about the same place, but thank God it’s not at a 90° angle.
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danny, your bit about “Tide” stirred some memories, at one time I worked in the ol’ dhobi business and along the way picked more information about detergents than any sane self-respecting chap needs, ought to have or should admit to. None-the- less, here’s a very good and quite comprehensive version of the development of Tide by the chemists at P&G:
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/tidedetergent.
Bounty bars…one of my favourites.
Dundee in the sixties?
Ditto Glasgow…St Enoch’s Square Underground station
Glasgow…Elmbank Street …the pub has changed it’s name…love the sight of the traffic polis in their white coats ( which passed for hi-viz in those days)…and a helmet on his heid!
Those “Kiltie shoes” sound scary …there’s an xray device within the shoe! eh whit? I remember the Xray
fluoroscopes in shops in the fifties and sixties ( my feet still glow in the dark to this day) …but what in the name of the wee man was going on IN those shoes?
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Thanks Jake! That story of the development of “Tide” is truly a fascinating read. It brought back some memories of a chemistry professor of mine who was an expert on detergents and soaps. Maybe someday I’ll go to Cincinnati and pay my respects to the National Historic Chemical Landmark at the birthplace of “Tide.” Some of the old P&G brands are still on the shelves. “Ivory” brand bar soap is still marketed I know, and P&G’s very first synthetic detergent “Dreft” is still marketed as a non-heavy-duty detergent for baby clothes.
I just looked at a “Tide” box to see if the old P&G logo showing a bearded, crescent man-in-the-moon looking over a field of stars is still there. It wasn’t on the modern box of Tide. P&G used that logo for 150 years or so. It was on wooden crates of candles and soap that they shipped down the Ohio River from Cincinnati in pre-Civil-War times, and was still in use at least as late as the 1990’s. It may still be on some P&G products, although it was involved in court cases regarding a ridiculous hoax about being a satanic symbol.
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Those quiz programmes from the past are so lame compared to today.
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We’ll need to feature “Double Your Money” next.
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Dundee it is.
I really can’t imagine how they could fit an X Ray into boys’ shoes. Seems harmful without being beneficial. What was the parent supposed to do? Have a look at the plates every night?
As a child (but not a teenager) I was utterly uninterested in what my shoes looked like.
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Jake, Re Elmbank St photo, I would have thought that the Beresford Hotel would have been worth a mention as an Art Deco piece. It is still there. It was for a while a university hall of residence, but I do not know its use today.
I cannot make out the number on the tram or read the destination boards, but it would be either a 16 (Scotstoun/Springburn) or an 18 (Maryhill/somewhere on the soo-side.)
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Alasdair, the tram’s destination is Oatlands.
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andimac, thanks for the clarification – I am getting a cataract operation next Saturday, so I should be able to see more clearly what is in photos.
If it is heading to Oatlands, I guess it was a number 18 tram. I never took it south, but, occasionally, I took it to get to Firhill to watch the Jags as it went along Maryhill Road
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Hey Alasdair. Munguin and the Munguinites all wish you the very best for next Saturday.
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Alasdair, all the best for the cataract op – I know several people who’ve had the op and all of them say it’s amazing how well they can see afterward. You’ll never get on the wrong tram again 🙂
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Munguin, Tris, andimac, thanks for your good wishes. I had the other eye done a few years back and the change was amazing, so, I have actually been looking forward to this!
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Great, Alasdair. We’ll look forward to hearing how it went. I suspect you’ll be in and out pretty quick?
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When my wife had her’s last year, she was in and out in barely 10 minutes!
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Ah, well, we’ll expect to hear from you next weekend. 🙂
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The linguistic expertise on Munguin’s New Republic is unequaled in its excellence. Ed’s Eastern European languages and Conan’s Latin come to mind to name only two examples.
So perhaps I’ll be forgiven if I go off-topic to address a disturbing issue that has arisen. I’m aware that in Congressional testimony regarding the Ukraine-Gate impeachment investigation, the capital city of Ukraine is being pronounced in a non-traditional way. Perhaps an indication that the Ukrainian corruption in the American government is deeper than I’d supposed. 😉
The article below indicates that the spelling has been officially changed, as has the pronunciation. The issue is clearly more complex in its implications than I realized. The style manuals of major world media outlets are discussed, so I wonder what decision Munguin World Media has made regarding the matter. I’d also like to know if the change is likely to affect the name of (my favorite) chicken dish?
https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/4927/kiev-now-kiev-or-kyiv-what-to-call-ukraines-capital
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Indeed.
I demand that everyone should stop spelling Ainster as Anstruther!
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Very interesting Juteman! Seems to be an issue between Scots and Scottish Gaelic. Wiki says that locally it’s Ainster with “a” as in Spain. Anstruther is a “u” as in cup.
This says:
“Try Ain-stur and you’ll nae gae faur wrang in Fife.”
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g186529-i948-k3095623-Anstruther_pronunciation_settle_a_bet-Fife_Scotland.html
https://www.scotsman.com/news-2-15012/place-name-of-the-week-anstruther-eanstair-1-4445606
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@Danny.
I once saw an interview on TV of an actress (Elaine C Smith?) performing in Dundee. She had to play her part in the local Dundee dialect.
When asked how she managed that, she replied that it was easy. Just miss out all the consonants.
Not far off the mark! 🙂
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She got it pretty much right, Jutie.
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Oh, the problems we have with all these languages floating about…
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And I wish people would stop spelling “Prick” as “Rees Mogg”.
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LOL!!!!
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LOL, Iain.
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Conan ad Eduardus? A posse ad esse. [a amet faciem]
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Involves a posse does it?
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You need help, chasing down hard cases…
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🙂
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Conan…..Makes sense! 😉
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Ouch. Conan, you are on track for the Freeman Golden Groan award for today.
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LOL LOL LOL, Conan.
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Danny: I’d quite forgotten that word, from cowboy films…
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Posse Comitatus “A force from who are able”. Roughly.
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Posse Comitatus was prominently used by local sheriffs in the US in the 19th century, but was subject to misuse through lawless violent behavior.
Wiki: “The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law that was signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States.”
So presidents cannot use military personnel for such purposes within the national borders without a federal court order. I think that President Eisenhower had to get an order from a federal court to send the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1954 to quell violence and enforce integration of Central High School.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus
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Dear heavens, the South!
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Came across the posse comitatus, as something like manpower of the county, in a mediaeval constitutional document but don’t recall exactly in what context – but sure it would be in Stubbs’s collection, that being the standard reference book when I was a student.
Once tried to explain to a French colleague (a fan of westerns) that mediaeval English sheriffs would raise a posse to pursue evil doers – but found it very difficult to convince him that this body was originally an English concept. Had difficulty even with the concept of county which didn’t translate into apparent French equivalent. And getting into the origins of the office of sheriff in the mediaeval shire -reeve was definitely a bridge or ten too far.
It occurs to me that the comitatus element would be less obvious in the USA, where one could presumably be sheriff of a town, thus obscuring the language link between the functionary and the institution.
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Ah, the Sheriff of Nottingham… or Dodge City. In France the shérif is more like the head policeman. le capitaine de gendarmerie, more like the American one, rather than the English one which was like general leader…
How to explain that in easy French….
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Cairnallochy…..Although there are surely some variations among the 50 states, in modern times the “Sheriff” is generally the law enforcement official of a county……which is the next level below the law enforcement jurisdiction of the State. The Sheriff does not usually have much direct authority (as far as I know) within the municipalities (towns and cities) of the county, which have Police departments that do the law enforcing. In the old west, I suspect that the titles varied a lot. Towns probably did often have sheriffs back in the day. Anyway, they certainly had “posses” of western movie fame.
Today, violent armed right wing “militia” groups in America often declare themselves to be at war with the federal government, and have picked up on the Posse Comitatus terminology of ninth century England. In confrontations with federal (or even state) law enforcement, they will declare that the only authority they recognize is that of the county sheriff. There is a far right “Posse Comitatus” organization and movement.
Wiki (below): “Posse members believe that there is no legitimate form of government above that of the county level and no higher law authority than the county sheriff.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_(organization)
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Hm. Then no doubt they would have no objection to the sheriffs of the surrounding counties telling them they’re not allowed in.
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Ed…..One would think so, but since that would be inconvenient, the gun-loving sociopaths and freeloaders who populate the right wing militia movement would find some other obscure principle to invoke in their war with governing authority. I tried (but failed) to find a clip of an incident during the Clive Bundy standoff showing the right wing weirdos armed to the teeth and holding federal authorities (FBI I think) at gunpoint while they ranted about the county sheriff being the only authority on earth that they acknowledge.
The Bundy family are nothing but deadbeat freeloading ranchers who don’t want to pay the fees for grazing rights for their cattle on federal lands……all the while ranting revolutionary rhetoric about Posse Comitatus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff
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I followed that on US cable news at the time. Horrible people, and crazy with it. Right-wing ideology as a cover for not paying their dues or being contributing members of society. Meaner than bobcats without blowholes too, or rattlesnakes, or something.
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Still have the wild west there, Danny.
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Ed…..You have that right. Generally the right wingers who proclaim to hate government as a matter of political ideology are simply deadbeats and freeloading sociopaths who hate to pay taxes.
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Tris……Wild west for sure….LOL. I think it’s probably a law that you have to have a gun in a rack across the rear window of your truck. 😉
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Tris……The integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, came three years after the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas), which kicked off more than a decade of civil unrest that ultimately destroyed the entire structure of effective apartheid in the southern states. The violence and threats against the “Little Rock Nine” who integrated Central High prompted President Eisenhower to nationalize the Arkansas National Guard (taking it out of the control of the governor of Arkansas, who was using it to block the students from the school) and send army troops of the 101st Airborne Division to get the kids to school through the howling mobs. It was the first use of regular US Army Troops within the borders of the United States since the Civil War and the “Reconstruction” period in the South that followed. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was a response to the end of Reconstruction, and sharply limited the presidential power to use troops within the borders of the country. It was a direct response to the post-Civil-War military occupation of the Southern confederacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
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Thanks, Danny. It’s some place, the South. So full of religion. So full of hate.
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Tris…..Oh yea……The bad guys in the cowboy movies usually had a posse chasing them.
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What? Oh. If you say so, Conan.
Re Ukrainian: after the collapse of the old Soviet Union, the Ukrainians themselves asked officially for Kiev (Киев in Russian) to be changed to Kyiv (Київ in Ukrainian) in United Nations usage to better reflect the name and pronunciation of the place in Ukrainian. The English-language spelling doesn’t really do that, actually, but maybe they thought “Kiyv” would look even stranger. They also asked for the traditional “the Ukraine” to be changed to just “Ukraine”. Possibly at the same time, I can’t remember.
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“roughly” As in he took her…
…to the pictures.
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Ah, that is interesting.
Київ in Ukranian and Киев in Russian.
I’m reminded of the Mumbai/Bombay or Beijing/Pekin débacles not to mention Tokyo/Tokio.
It seems that the name (or rather the spelling) should be decided upon by the Ukranians… but that’s not going to be easy.
The important thing, as you rightly point out is that killing chicken with garlic sauce, covering it with breadcrumbs and roasting it for 30 minutes MUST remain Chicken Kiev.
Munguin says so!
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You kill a chicken with garlic sauce? Is that like ortolans and brandy?
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Now who would do a thing like that?
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The French. It drowns and marinades at the same time. You have to eat them with a neckerchief over your head so God or the gendarmes don’t see you…
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Funny lot, the French.
Foreign, you know!
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Can’t say as I like songbirds as comestibles. Not enough meat on’em.
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Tris……I’m glad to get that Chicken Kiev issue settled…..LOL.
I do wonder why sometimes we pay attention to what name people want to call a place in their own language, and sometimes we don’t. Are we going to start calling Munich Munchen? 😉
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LOL and are the French going to stop calling London, Londres.
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Such things are called exonyms. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. We’ve given up calling Mumbai Bombay, for example, and with the changes in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union Alma-Ata became Almaty (same process as Kiev becoming Kyiv), while others reverted to earlier names. Stalingrad had already reverted to Volgograd in 1961, but had been known as Tsaritsyn in pre-revolutionary days; Ekaterinburg (Yekaterinburg) over to the east on the other side of the Urals was renamed Sverdlovsk after the revolution, but reverted to Yekaterinburg after the fall of the Soviet Union.
There are others that I can’t think of off the top of my head – oh – Sankt Peterburg, of course – started out as Sankt Piters Burkh as in Dutch, so named by Peter the Great, who founded it. That transmogrified quickly to Sankt Pitersburg as being too much of a mouthful. It lost the non-Russian element “Sankt” along the way, and had many other variants too. Pushkin coined the name “Petrograd”, but it wasn’t officially called that until 1914 and the outbreak of WWI, when Tsar Nicholas got rid of the Germanic element “-burg”. It became Leningrad in 1924 (thanks to Wikipedia for refreshing my memory about the dates!), and then in 1991, by referendum this time, not by fiat, back to Sankt-Piterburg (Saint Petersburg). “Saint Petersburg” is, of course, itself an exonym.
The natives have referred to it simply and unofficially as “Piter” (Peter) for time out of mind, as far as I know.
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Jings… that was interesting. I didn’t know it had so many changes of name…
I had St Petersberg and Leningrad… end
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Tris…..Me too! 🙂
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Ed……Thanks a lot for the new word “exonym” and the principle that “sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t” when it comes to place names. The first one that came to my attention some years ago was Mumbai/Bombay, but at the time I failed to grasp the larger principle. Kiev/Kyiv had entirely escaped my attention until I heard the US State Department people testifying at the impeachment hearings who (confusingly for me) use Kyiv all the time.
And really fascinating about the name of Saint Petersburg, and the other Soviet/Russian name changes! 🙂
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Oops, I just put in my own two ha’p’orth on the subject, otiosely.
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Thanks, Danny. That link has cleared up a bit of a mystery. I’ve noticed that the online Financial Times has been using the Kyiv spelling for the past few weeks and wondered if this was political correctness or new editorial orthodoxy in transliterating the Cyrillic rendering. If it’s the preferred option of the Ukrainian authorities, all is explained.
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John……I first heard the “new” name in the impeachment hearings. I too thought that link was interesting and informative.
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The square steering wheel I recognise from oor Austin Allegro, the moped is a Triumph weirdly enough.
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I’d never seen a square steering wheel. Odd, I thought, and possibly dangerous.
Imagine Triumph building something so puny! LOL
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Well, my stepfather did do a barrel roll in his, so you’re probably right.
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See, I told you. They should have asked me.
A square wheel…I ask you!
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The moped is a 1950s Triumph Knirps, produced in Germany by TWN, or Triumph-Werk Nürnberg AG, a sister company of the one in Coventry. Both were founded by Siegfried Bettmann, a native of Nuremberg, but operated as separate organisations. Knirps translates as “little one or tot”. Interesting that the speedometer drive cable is disconnected in the photo. Bit dodgy. I once had a front brake cable come away from the bars on a Triumph Tiger 90. It fell on the road and the back wheel ran over it, locking both wheels. How I stayed on it I’ll never know. The good thing was, I was wearing brown trousers that day… British Leyland called the steering wheel on the Allegro the “Quartic” and I believe they had a patent on it. It was similar to a number of non-circular wheels seen on American cars of the era. It only appeared on the Mk.1s and nothing was heard of it again. I wonder why?
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LOL I wonder why they would have a patent on something as awful.
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See above!
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People hated it, is why. Is that the model – or was the terrible idea resuscitated later – anyway, I recall that various police forces were conned, bribed, lambasted or otherwise obliged to buy them for use on the streets – they were sometimes referred to as “jam sangwiches” in Glasgow, as I recall – and of course the polis hated them too.
They turned out to have one rather serious design problem: when cranked up with the jack at the stipulated attachment points in order to change a front tyre, the windscreen would pop out. Or so I heard.
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The upholstery and the door handles are also dead giveaways for BL.
I used to drive my pals allegro and there was always bits falling off it. It was quite a terrifying drive and the gear change was like stirring soup.
In fairness it had done 120,000 miles before the speedo packed in.
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I guess in the days of the Allegro, 120,000 miles was a good innings.
My pals granny had one. It was singularly awful. For some strange reason she went on to buy a second one when the first one failed its MOT so badly that it had to be scrapped.
Some people never learn.
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Jake was spot on with St Enoch’s Square and Elmbank Street. I’d say both taken in the 1950s, going by the clothes and I think the Glesca Polis stopped wearing helmets in the early 1950s. Danny might like to know (if he doesn’t already) that the fine Art Deco building on Sauchiehall Street at the top of Elmank Street was the Beresford Hotel where on
a famous American’s trip to Glasgow he made his first public speech. That was in 1939 and the individual was JFK – you may find the BBC’s account of interest –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-49557543
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Yes, 1950s, Andi.
Interesting article on JFK.
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Andi…….Interesting article! I knew that the young JFK was in Britain with Ambassador Joe Kennedy, but I didn’t realize that he carried out any official duties.
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Being trained up by daddy!
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Tris…….Yep……and that’s disturbing! By most accounts Joe Kennedy was an evil heartless son of a bitch, even by political standards. Joe ran afoul of FDR and was forced to resign as Ambassador to Britain for his defeatist views and attempts to have a chat with Hitler. The initial opposition to JFK in the Democratic party came mostly from the fact that he was Joe Kennedy’s son, and was seeking the presidency that his father couldn’t get for himself, and that Joe Sr. then wanted for Joe Jr. to have, before Joe Jr. was killed in the war.
When the bombing of London started, Joe was famous for the amount of time he spent in air raid shelters. A member of Britain’s Foreign Office said, “I thought my daffodils were yellow until I met Joe Kennedy.” JFK learned all about womanizing from old Joe.
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Pretty much as I heard about him from my elders and betters when I was a kid and they hadn’t got tired yet of my incessant questions of who, what, where, why, when and how.
I like the yellow daffodil analogy. I shall try to stuff it into my overfull brain.
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Ed…..You hardly ever read a good word about Joe Kennedy……from reputed bootlegging and mob connections during prohibition, to conflicts of interest while Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to his image as “a self-centered, anti-Semitic, Nazi-loving defeatist” during his tenure as Ambassador to the Court of St. James.
When JFK was getting ready for a presidential run in 1960, his Catholicism was viewed as a historical problem. Harry Truman, FDR’s VP who followed him into the White House, was still a force in the Democratic Party. He said, “My problem with Kennedy is not the Pope, it’s the Pop!”
I saw this article that deals more kindly with Joe Kennedy and his ill-fated Ambassadorship in London during 1938-1940. Perhaps of interest.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/49178
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Very thought-provoking, Danny. Thanks for that. If FDR had no confidence in him and less liking for him, he should not have put him in the key position of Ambassador to the UK when he did, and hamstring him in his work. I was thinking that perhaps FDR wanted to run the American-UK relationship himself; direct telephone connection was possible by then.
It reminds me a bit of the treatment Masha Yovanovitch got at the hands of Trump and his nasty little pals, though without the criminality.
The more we learn about Trump and his machinations, the more sickening they become. Not just fools, but treasonous fools, playing by Vladimir Putin’s playbook.
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Ed….From what I can make out, FDR was a consummate politician and master manipulator who loved to keep it all in his head and make use of his staff as it suited his purposes……which were generally for the good of the country. Trump may have much the same instincts, but is too stupid to make good use of them for anything but narrow narcissistic self interest.
After the drama around the FDR third term issue in 1940 and Kennedy’s resignation as ambassador, FDR still maintained cautious but strained relations with Kennedy who was influential with lots of Catholic voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere.
You might also be interested in an article I noticed in the Daily Beast that makes the case that the fortune Joe Kennedy made in booze was actually not from bootlegging and mob connections as is widely believed, but was perfectly legal and took advantage of good timing and skillful planning at the end of the prohibition era. Also that his early association with James Roosevelt, FDR’s eldest son, was perfectly legal and proper and involved no conflicts of interest. Interesting history, whether old Joe was actually a crook or not. 😉
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-biggest-kennedy-myth
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Was the Mafia not involved in the election of JFK? Didn’t Frank Sinatra get involved with trying to persuade them that Kennedy would be good for them?
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Tris…..A connection with the mob was always rumored about the Kennedys….allegedly going back to Joe Kennedy’s connections during prohibition. Then when Bobby Kennedy became Attorney General and started prosecuting the gangsters, the relationship apparently fell apart. One version of the story has JFK and Sam Giancana, boss of the Chicago crime syndicate, sleeping with the same woman at one point. Anyway, Sinatra stepped in……with his definite mob connections…….to try to heal the rift. That ultimately soured his (Sinatra’s) friendship with the Kennedys, and he suddenly wasn’t welcome at the White House anymore. The problem with that story is that EVERYONE knew that Sinatra always had mob connections, so how was it that the Kennedys didn’t dump Sinatra long before they actually did? Anyway, the Kennedys were in the White House, the mob was pissed off, and Sinatra was out in the cold. This story speculates about what happened: 😉
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a24443048/frank-sinatra-pat-kennedy-affair-jfk-handsome-johnny-book-excerpt/
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Jeez, Danny.
What ghastly people!
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I love that… I thought my daffodils were yellow till I met Joe Kennedy!
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Pic 2 is from the British TV sitcom – Rising Damp, featuring Leonard Rossiter as the landlord Rigsby and Frances de la Tour as Miss Jones the object of his affection. Richard Beckinsale and Don Warrington were two other lodgers. I liked the series although, like many, it ran too long. Pic 6 – Priscilla White, better known as Cilla Black – in the 60s before she had her nose job done. As a young guy, I thought she was a really good singer but I could never reconcile myself to her being the presenter of the duff TV show Blind Date. Pic 17 – Criss Cross Quiz, presented by Jeremy Hawk – I used to watch it on TV at a pal’s or at my Granny’s – we didn’t get a TV until much later. Pic 19 – “Hello, playmates!” – Arthur Askey – IMHO about as funny as dysentery.
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From what I’ve heard he was dire, andi.
Cilla had a not bad voice, but I don’t think she kept it going. As she grew older she had to find another outlet for her talent. I never watched any of her ‘Surprise Surprise’ shows or ‘Blind Date’. Jeez, the format sounds awful.
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You’ve been remiss on the bus front recently but I can’t let #12 pass without comment.
This is a 1929 Leyland Tiger TS2 (SO 3740) currently in residence at the Scottish Vintage Bus Museum, Lathalmond, where I’ve had the pleasure of drooling over it. A truly magnificent 90 year old (!) machine, makes me feel quite emotional….I’m afraid tin-front TD3’s (your recent offerings) don’t have the same effect!
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Roddy: Munguin sends his deepest apologies for Tris’s remiss behavior concerning buses!
He says that we shall do better…
Although we’re not sure we want to encourage too much emotion.
Maybe Munguin will visit Lathalalmond next summer and take some pictures for himself.
🙂
Now go and have a nice cup of coffee and calm down.
🙂
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The exposed radiators…. ….. the engine rumble…….the vibration / sense of power……..like a primitive beast…..aaaaaah! Head says hybrids are good for us, but heart says it’s just no the same.
I need a lie-down.
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LOL, Roddy. You got it bad.
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The ‘decker in #3 (HGC 147) is a Guy Arab II which began life in 1945 as London Transport G368 with Massey utility bodywork. It was withdrawn in the early 1950’s & acquired by Scottish Bus Group who replaced the Massey body with a new Alexander low-bridge one. It was later transferred within SBG to Highland Omnibuses for use on Dounreay work before being finally withdrawn in May 1967.
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I wonder if in 50 years, people will look back at the buses we now have and get emotional over their beauty…
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I doubt it as nowadays it’s all about functionality, standardisation, neither the variety of vehicle or livery that there was in my day. (I mean Barbie*… for gawds sake….. )
Nevertheless there are those who get obsessive about the finer details of current vehicles. I suspect it’s a childhood thing, a sentimental affinity to the buses you grew up with, which took you to school.
(although 1929 Leyland’s pre-date even me!)
* Barbie was the hideous pink/mauve Firstgroup livery rolled out across their entire fleet in the name of corporate identity and now (thankfully) being confined to the dustbin.
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Ewwwww… pink and mauve. Jings, who could get attached to that?
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It is interesting (photo 10) that the Balfron bus is marked route 10A. This is the route number for the Balfron buses which currently ply between Balfron and Buchanan St via Maryhill Road.
I had initially thought that it was amazing that the same route number is in place as was the case more than 50 years ago. However, I note that the bus photo is dated 2015, so perhaps, whoever owns the bus has put the current route number on it. Nostalgia demands that it OUGHT to be the continuation of the route number.
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But you know what they say about nostalgia, don’t you, Alasdair
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Born 1940 I can just remember SMT double deckers with outside stairs.
Does an body have photos of one of them?
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I can only find one SMT example of a double- decker with outside stairs (paste link into browser)..
http://www.britishcommercialvehiclemuseum.com/image-archives/product/leyland-titan-td1smtl005951a/
The open rear staircase was short-lived, by 1930 the Titan TD1 had it’s staircase enclosed and earlier models were often rebuilt so there wouldn’t have been many about by the late ’30s. The operational life expectancy of these early petrol vehicles was only 6-8 years (although some were re-engined).
Google GE 2446 and you’ll find loads of images of preserved Glasgow Corporation 111, the oldest resident at Lathalmond.
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I was going to say, in our climate?, but it wouldn’t make much difference really because you had to get to or from the bus.
I suppose the reservations about open stains would be that if the bus braked suddenly, something you were carrying might fall out… like your kid, for example!
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This is a handsome fellow, though.
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For some reason, pink and mauve… anyway, enjoy the great George Takei narrating this:
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Oh dear. Just oozing optimism, ain’t it? I the George Takei is great too. He was my – erm – favourite among the original Star Trek cast.
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To be honest, I’ve found optimism to be over rated.
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True. Not as successful a concept as it might be.
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In breach of the usual prohibition on advertising and self-aggrandisement enforced by Tris and Mr. Munguin, and in response to Tris’s kind offer to allow me to do so, I announce to all Munguinites of taste and discrimination, which is all of you, that I have put up a new post on my blog eddjasfreeman.wordpress.com.
I still can’t work WordPress properly and got terribly frustrated trying to make my blog look even slightly prettier, so I gave up on it pro tem for the sake of my mental health, maybe for ever. So we’re stuck with your basic black.
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Bravo, I’d add you to the blog list, but it seems that it has become impossible to do… or maybe I’ve just got stupider.
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https://eddjasfreeman.wordpress.com/
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Can you put a link, Ed.
No problem. Done it now.
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Oops. Evidently IÂ forgot to put a link in. I’ll be forgetting to put my troosers on next.
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De-oops. I did put eddjasfreeman.wordpress.com in, but WordPress didn’t automatically turn it into a link. How very unlike WordPress to be so annoying. Thanks to Tris for sorting that out: maybe at some point I will work out how he did it.
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Maybe, at some point, I@LL work out how I did it. It just happened!
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bronze horseman poem
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Oops. Ignore that bronze horseman.
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Good one, Conan! All Lunnon, though, isn’t it? No Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, or Wellington with his traffic cone in Glasgow – though maybe he didn’t usually have one when that song was recorded. Anyway, here’s Saint Petersburg’s Bronze Horseman, Peter the Great: https://todiscoverrussia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/The-Bronze-Horseman.jpg – who knows, maybe it’ll even display in line.
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Ah yes, The Bonzos as they are now yclept. Sad story that.
Firstly they lost their DooDaah, and some years later, the dog died. Tragic to my mind.
Still; brilliant with a hint of genius lurking underneath.
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Oh dear… still nothing is quite what it used to be after 10 years of Tory cuts.
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Pay attention to this Bronze Horseman instead. Here’s a link to a pdf of a translation of Pushkin’s poem of that title. It’s amazing in the original Russian, of course, but I rather like this English translation: https://is.gd/JC7gJB.
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How do you all know so much? I love this site.
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Dunno about the the knowing so much, but I love this site too.
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They are a bright lot, aren’t they? 🙂
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We’re a bright lot (well some of us: modesty forbids I include my humble self) because we had the Scottish Enlightenment which, as any fule know, was a result of Hydro-Electric power as invented by David Hume.
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Aways thankful that one of our own “Sheldon Coopers” is there with the answer.
A site better than Wikipedia. 🙂
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Nonsense, it was James Watt invented the hydroelectric. That’s why you buy it in kiloWatts (at first electricity was so expensive people could only afford to buy it one Watt at a time, you see, in small metal containers to keep the volts in).
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yeah but…it was discovered pre-decimalisation so it didn’t come in kilos, it came in pounds and ounces.
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This is true, Jake. But as the technology improved, people graduated from smidgenWatts to pinchWatts and before you knew it they’d gone way beyond peckoWatts and were buying them in gallonWatt and bushelWatt lots. As they still do in America, but in US gallons not Imperial ones, naturally. I mean, they fought a whole war just so they could have different fluid measures, and the right to establish the cup as a unit of measurement in cooking, and then keep the exact quantity of a cup secret from the rest of the world.
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Watt a powerful explanation, Ed: it’s currently one of your best.
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🙂
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Yet despite all this and the supply end of electricity production being measured in units of fluid capacity ( mug o’ watts now being more commonly used) …we users pay for it in units of length. Hence the expression ” a shilling for the meter”.
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After Brexit, we shall probably revert to paying for it by the yard.
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If not the4 furlong and pole.
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Oh lord, Jake. Almost literally rolling on the floor. Brilliant!
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Hmmm, Jake. PoundWatts…?
Last time I heard that was when I asked Munguin for the five pounds her owed me.
“Watt pounds?”, he replied.
I’ll get my coat…
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KiloWatts? I didn’t know electricity was so heavy!
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