God's Own County

You Say ‘Graffiti’ – I Say ‘Graffito’

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Hortoris

self 011

Rude and crude graffiti has been obliterated on this wall near Menston railway station.
Rather than leave the offending and singular graffito the potential ‘Banksy’ has been covered with this ugly blue gunge. Putting one graffito on top of another must make it a pluralist graffiti.
If only the first one had been professionally and chemically removed we would have had graffitno!

In seeking an influence to calm me down I noticed that these sheep in Wharfedale have suffered from the degraffitiser and have also been painted blue. I wonder what the original message said. ‘Ewe got preggers OK’?

wharfedale

Posted in Wit and Humour | Comments Off

Visiting Churches – Buildings, Interiors and Environment

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Hortoris

What do you ‘look for’ and ‘look at’ when visiting a church for the first time or the umpteenth time come to that?
This is just a quick list of some of the items you may want to consider on your next visit.

The Environment

What and where is the village, town or parish and how has it developed alongside the Church.
What is the setting and positioning of the church, its elevation and relationship to other buildings and physical features.
What spaces are around the church and why are they there?
What is distinguished about the churchyard, crosses, lychgates and statuary.
What materials have been used in the construction and also what has no been used to put the building into context with the surroundings.

The Building and Architecture

Have a good look around the building in general and then in some detail (pick a fine sunny day for this and you will be totally absorbed and potentially sun tanned).
Towers if present may have battlements or be a later addition, they may not be built in the usual western end of the church.
Is there a spire and how are high parts accessed?
Look at the nave and chancel to see if they are under one continuous roof.
How many doorways are present, have any been blocked up are the fittings medieval and if the main door is not in the south wonder why.
Are there any low windows or unusual high ones like Otley.
Porches are common on Anglo Saxon churches but Normans were left out in the cold. Some churches have external stone benches.

Interior

Buy, borrow or read any guidebook or information panels.
Windows and roofs can be very informative. The east window over the chancel and altar generally provide the majority of the light. The clerestory is an upper row of extra windows.
Stained glass often tells a story, but what of the story of the funding and installation.
The font is traditionally placed near the entrance to indicate it is easy to enter the church through baptism. Font covers or lids may be present or at least the former hinge locations. Puritains were not against smashing the font cover or even the font itself.
The altar will not escape attention but the nave, pulpit, lectern and furnishings are often fascinating.
Memorials, effigies, wall tablets, inscriptions, curiosities and miscellaneous items often tell about the life of the church through the decades and centuries.

Posted in Our Yorkshire, Yorkshire History and Heritage | Tagged churches | 1 Comment

Fred Trueman Still Speaks Out

Posted on June 11, 2016 by tejvan

Frederick Sewards Trueman OBE Fred Trueman to All Yorkshire Folk

All Yorkshiremen have a favourite Fred Trueman story and mine goes something like this: Opening the bowling as usual from the Kirkstall Lane End Fred’s first ball rapped the openers pads and Fred bellowed Owzat only to get a firm shake of the head from the umpire, the next ball created an audible snick and firmly Fred appealed to get an even firmer ‘Not Out’, on the third ball Trueman flattened the middle stump and remarked to the umpire ‘Well umpire we nearly had him that time!’

Fred was a great raconteur and afterdinner speaker amongst his sporting tallents and this CD brings back many memories and the dulcet tones of a great Yorkshire personality and character. I for one wish he were still around to give vent on Twitter, that is about twitter not using it like some current footballers.

Take a walk on the wild side in April or May and the chances are you will smell the wonderful scent of our Yorkshire bluebells.
Bluebells grow best under the edge of woodland in dappled shade of deciduous trees. The sun and light in spring, before the tree leaves fully develop, encourages the nodding, bell shaped, violet-blue flowers of our native bulbs.

Unlike the foreign imports from Spain and Italy our Yorkshire Bluebells have a wonderful scent. They can also be recognised by the curved back petals and creamy-white anthers.

The scent attract insects to Bluebells delicately scented flowers which aids pollination. The resultant seed helps spread the bluebells into large drifts.

God’s Own County is part serious / part humorous look at the great county of Yorkshire. Everything from the wonderful scenery of the Yorkshire Dales and Yorkshire Moors to the best place to park your bike in Leeds city centre. We celebrate the great icons of Yorkshire from Hannah Hauxwell to Bernard Ingham and Geoffrey Boycott.

We cover everything from photos of ‘Idle – Working Man’s Club’ to the growing movement of Yorkshire Independence!

We love to hear from anyone with a passion for Yorkshire or you can just enjoy the typical Yorkshire wit.

‘Now Willie you mustn’t be selfish you should let your brother have the sledge half the time’.
‘I do Mum, I have it coming down and he has it going up’.

Classic Yorkshire Bluebell Locations

Our native bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, is widespread in low level woodland such as Freeholders Wood Nature Reserve Wensleydale
Other good smelling spots include Bratt Wood near Hull Nunburnholme
Stittenham Wood Sheriff Hutton
Sutton Wood Sutton-on-Derwent
Burton Bushes Bluebell walk Beverley
Hackfall Wood near Ripon
Middleton Woods Ilkley and Grass Wood in Wharfedale.
Newton Woods at Roseberry Topping
Millington Wood near Pocklington & Hagg Wood Dunnington
Renishaw House and Woolley Woods Sheffield
Hardcastle Crags, West Yorkshire A hidden beauty spot near Hebden Bridge. The three-mile Mill Walk is the ideal place to see a mass of bluebells in spring..

Posted in Books Club & Literary Work, Yorkshire Folk | Tagged Book club, sport | Comments Off

Likely Lads from Bingley – Rodney Bewes

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Hortoris

Rodney Bewes was born near Bingley Grammar School in 1939 and was a sickly child suffering from asthma. At the age of 12 he read in the Daily Herald that the BBC wanted some child actors and he wrote in, was auditioned and featured in several Children’s Hour programmes.
Rodney moved to London aged 14 to study at RADA but was expelled for failing to work. Undaunted he developed his acting career and was cast in Billy Liar alongside Tom Courtney, Julie Christie Wilfred Pickles and Leonard Rossiter. Billy Liar was largely filmed in Bradford as a 1963 film based on the novel by Keith Waterhouse. It was directed by John Schlesinger.

Rodney Bewes as Mr Rodney wrote, produced and sometimes presented Basil Brush – Ha Ha Ha Boom Boom! It was the Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads that made Rodney a household name.

DVD’s and T-shirts are part of the Likely Lads memorabilia available from Amazon

The Likely Lads starring Rodney Bewes as Bob Ferris and James Bolam as Terry Collier is an aimless but endlessly entertaining saga that ran from 1963 when it featured on Christmas Night with the Stars. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’ the script and characterisations hit a funny bone on the elbo of the public. The series is the equal of Porridge, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Fawlty Towers, Dads Army, or Blackadder in the minds of many.
Bob often found himself ‘timidly chafing at the clutches of domestic “bliss” as personified by wife Thelma. He’s frustrated by or jealous of the footloose Terry who thinks the world has done him a bad turn.
December 1964 episodes were Entente Cordiale, Double Date and Older Women Are More Experienced, giving some clue as to the basis for the laddish humor that also gave the odd chortle to all the family.

The series was watched by some 27 million people and the sitcom made Rodney Bewes and James Bolam household names. Friends in the series Rodney’s TV jealousy continued as he fell out with James Bolam over the rights to earn fees for repeat showing. Rodney also had a high profile dispute with George Harrison’s widow over a garden fence. A case of ‘Bewes Bingley Bitchiness’ or a Likely Lad still putting it around? It has also been reported that he told a harmless but personal story about James Bolam and his wife in a press interview and despite seeking to apologise Bolam put the phone down and has ever spoke to him again.

Posted in Yorkshire Folk | Tagged actor | Comments Off

Provident, Payday or Credit Union Loans

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Hortoris

Not having money costs you and it is a vicious circle of debt and high often unfair cost.

Cheap at No Price
118 118 Money are offering loans over 2 years at a representative 99.9% APR. (Annual percentage rate)
Instant Payday UK offer to lend £200 for 30 days: Total amount payable = £240 @ 1223% APR (Variable)
Quick quid 1294.1% APR
Wonga.com were a new phenomenon in the personal finance world setting out to challenge Yorkshire based Provident Financial Services, ‘The Provi’.
Yorkshire folk are canny with money and I couldn’t believe we would be sucked in by a new company offering loans that advertise interest rates of 2,689%. One way they explain the annualised interest rates are to show a short loan of 5 days at the rate is 3253% – so that’s OK then. Todays advertised headline rate is APR of 1,261% APR At least when it became known that the Church of England were investing wonga in Wonga the Archbishop created a media storm and the rate started to come down.

Provident on the other hand advertise a rate of 254.5% about 10 times the going rate on an expensive credit card but needs must when the devil drives. Small loans without charges can still cost 1068.5% APR. The old proverb ‘neither a borrower or lender be’ had been forgotten. Prior to the latest financial crisis looking at Wonga’s interest rates even I might have been tempted to be a lender ( not really).

Provident History
In 1880 Provident was founded in the West Riding by Joshua Waddilove an insurance agent. The company intended to help some working class families who struggled to pay for essential items such as furniture, clothes and shoes. Repayments were collected in small weekly installments. By the time Joshua died in 1920 Provident Clothing and Supply Co Ltd had grown into a nationwide business with over 5,000 agents operating from a head office in Bradford.
The company also operates Vanquis Bank now based in London. In 1962 the company became a public listed company and the business model is now rolled out internationally through International Personal Finance plc. and Provident Finance plc is still a FTSE 250 listed stock. According to wikipedia the ‘Company’s biggest business is (still) lending to people in their homes via a network of doorstep agents. Out of an estimated 2.5 million people who borrow from Home Collected Credit providers, 1.5 million place their business with Provident Financial…’

Credit Unions

The Association of Credit Unions list 17 Yorkshire based organisations that may have financial products that could suit certain borrowers at far cheaper rates than home or internet collected credit.
If your bank manager isn’t of the listening kind try talking to Citizens Advice Bureau for free advice. There are over 150 recorded under Yorkshire on the CAB web site or your local library would be willing to help find one.

Posted in Yorkshire Business and Money | Comments Off

Flying Scotsman or Not

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Hortoris

bolton-abbey-steam

Sorry I need to get out and find a photograph of the real thing.

Flying Scotsman in Yorkshire

A free exhibition until 19th June in The National Railway Museum Gallery. It is focusing on the celebrity of arguably the world’s most famous locomotive.

Why is Flying Scotsman so well-known and how has that fame manifested itself?
What is it about this particular engine that has captured the imagination of generations worldwide?
Where can we see the engine in full steam?
Capture some truly special shots at our morning and evening photography sessions. This event takes place at Locomotion Shildon

1 June	The Tynesider (Cleethorpes to Morpeth via York)
15 June	London Euston to Holyhead (Flying Scotsman hauling Crewe to Holyhead return)
25 June	The Yorkshireman (London Victoria to York)
2 July	The Hadrian (Leicester to Carlisle)
10 July	The Waverley (York to Carlisle)
17 July	The Waverley (York to Carlisle)

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Duncan Preston Soap and Shakespearian Actor

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Hortoris

How many Yorkshire actors do you know that combine soap humor and Shakespeare? Well straight from The Bradford Playhouse and the Civic Playhouse via RADA I give you the career to date of Duncan Preston.
Duncan Preston is a Bradford-born actor who recently starred as Doug Potts in ITV’s Emmerdale. Duncan has now moved back from London, where he studied and excelled at RADA, to live near ‘Hotten’.

Duncan is well known for his roles in the TV sitcoms Dinnerladies, Surgical Spirit and Acorn Antiques. His successful collaboration with the late Victoria Wood has seen him take on many characters in Victoria’s sketch shows and her All Day Breakfast.

Duncan Preston’s impressive range of theatre credits include roles in various Royal Shakespeare Company productions such as Romeo & Juliet and Midsummer Nights Dream.
Duncan must be hard working as his TV credits include roles in The Professionals, All Creatures Great and Small, Bergerac, Heartbeat, My Family, Casualty, The Bill, Harry Enfield and Chums (as Kevin the teenager’s Dad) Robin of Sherwood, Coronation Street, The New Statesman, Press Gang, Boon, Peak Practice, Coogan’s Run, Midsomer Murders and Holby City.

Film credits include A Passage to India, Porridge, If Tomorrow Comes, Pat & Margaret, Happy Since I Met You, Scandalous, Macbeth and Milk

A range of DVD’s featuring Duncan Preston are available from Amazon. Try to raise a laugh, titter or smile when you go back down memory lane watching any of the classic series that featured Duncan.

Duncan Preston Other Interests

Duncan is a passionate supporter of The Alzheimers Society

The Bradford-born actor has been watching the Bradford Bulls play since the age of three, and that is in the last century! Duncan has been a campaigner to help save and refund the rugby club even trying to encourage the former chairman Chris Caisley to return to the helm.

Duncan received an honorary doctorate from Bradford University in 2000

Posted in Yorkshire Folk | Tagged actor | Comments Off

Sir Fred Hoyle Astronomer, Cosmologist and Sci-fi Author

Posted on June 8, 2016 by tejvan

Sir Fred Hoyle FRS 24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001 a Yorkshire man who coined the phrase ‘ The Big Bang’ and missed out on not one but two or three Nobel prizes for physics.
Fred Hoyle was born in Gilstead and went to Bingley Grammar school and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. During the war he worked on radar and assessing the height of enemy planes. After the war and a period as a lecturer at St Johns College he reached the top of ‘world astrophysics theory’ and was appointed to the illustrious Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge University.

Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science by Simon Mitton

A fascinating biography ‘The scientific life of Fred Hoyle was truly unparalleled. During his career he wrote groundbreaking scientific papers and caused bitter disputes in the scientific community with his revolutionary theories. Hoyle is best known for showing that we are all, literally, made of stardust in his paper explaining how carbon, and then all the heavier elements, were created by nuclear reactions inside stars. ‘
Fred Hoyle: Fellow of the Royal Society, Astronomer, Stellar nucleosynthesis, Cosmology, Big Bang, Science fiction, Geoffrey Hoyle.

Looking at Stars not Feet in Shipley Glen

In 1997 at the age of 82, while hiking across moorlands in West Yorkshire, near his childhood home in Gilstead, Fred Hoyle fell down into a steep ravine we know as Shipley Glen.
It was approximately twelve hours before Fred Hoyle was found by a search dog deep in amongst the rocks and trees.
He was hospitalized for two months with kidney problems as a result of hypothermia, pneumonia and a smashed shoulder.
It is probable that he never fully recovered as from around that time he suffered from memory and mental agility problems.

Quotes from Fred Hoyle

It seems Fred Hoyle had a way with words and could help the uninitiated get their heads around difficult astronomical concepts as he did with his use of the phrase the ‘Big Bang’ as opposed to his own theory of ‘steady state’.

‘Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.’
‘When I was young, the old regarded me as an outrageous young fellow, and now that I’m old the young regard me as an outrageous old fellow’. Well I guess that generally goes with being outrageous.

‘The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prevent one ever establishing a directed policy — key decisions can be upset by ill-informed and politically motivated committees. To be effective in this system one must for ever be watching one’s colleagues, almost like a Robespierre spy system.’ Not exactly a tow the line academic!

‘The successful pioneer of theoretical science is he whose intuitions yield hypotheses on which satisfactory theories can be built…..’ Fred put this to the test many times with his own theories. Many of his views were disproved or ridiculed by the establishment and he certainly used intuition in developing his own inimitable style.

‘Things are the way they are because they were the way they were.’

Fiction some co-authored with his son Geoffrey include The Black Cloud, The Westminster Disaster, Molecule Men, In to Deepest Space and Fifth Planet from Amazon

Posted in Books Club & Literary Work, Yorkshire Folk | Tagged Author, Novel | Comments Off

How Many Politicians will it take to change the EU?

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Hortoris

Now you are asking! Will the EU really change? Will the excessive levels of UK government ever become fit for purpose? The formula for the number of politicians currently required seems to be y(x + 1) when x is the existing number of politicians and you should not need to ask Y.

Size of UK Government Politicians

Members of Parliament MP                                                             650
Members of Scottish Parliament MSP                                           129
Members of Welsh Assembly AM                                                   60
Members of European Parliament MEP                                        751
Members of Legislative Assembly Northern Ireland MLA        108

Total reasons to vote Brexit 1698

The House of Lords has another 790 unelected ‘politicians’ and bishops.

The European Union ‘Government’

European Union has seven principal decision making bodies of the European Union.

The European Parliament – the 751 MEPs share the legislative and budgetary authority of the Union with the Council of the European Union
The European Council – is the group of heads of state or government of the EU member states. It has no formal legislative power but is a strategic and crisis-solving body that provides the union with general political directions and priorities.
The Council of the European Union – the Council of Ministers or just the Council is a body holding legislative and some limited executive powers and is thus the main decision making body of the Union. It comprises all the heads of state of each member country. The current president is Donald Tusk
The European Commission – or the EC is the executive arm of the Union. It is composed of one appointee from each of the 28 states but is theoretically designed to be independent of national interests. It drafts all law of the E U and proposes new laws and bills. It also deals with the day-to-day running of the Union. The current president is Jean Claude Junkers
The Court of Justice of the European Union – is the EU’s judicial branch responsible for interpreting EU law and treaties.
The European Central Bank – is the controlling bank for countries using the Euro currency
The Court of Auditors – should ensure that taxpayer funds from the budget of the European Union have been correctly spent. The court provides an audit report for each financial year to the Council and Parliament.

Thanks to Wikipedia and others

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Philip Davies Quips at Prime Ministers Question Time

Posted on June 5, 2016 by Hortoris

Like him and his politics or not you have to admire the MP for Shipley, Philip Davies. He regularly asks pertinent and punchy questions of our prime minister.
Generally Philip uses a degree of humour and a pithy turn of phrase to try and blindside at ‘Prime Ministers Question Time’. Here are a couple of recent examples.

Corruption
“…… stop pouring hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into Nigeria, Afghanistan and other corrupt countries.” and would my right honorable friend like to say where on the list of corruption he would place the European Union which has not had its accounts signed off for 20 years.

Dodgy Dossier
Mr Davies also asked “Why isn’t the Chilcot report being published before the European Referendum, is it because the prime minister and the chancellor do not want the public to be reminded how the government of the day and the establishment are prepared to prepare dodgy dossiers, make things up and distort the facts, to con the public into supporting something they otherwise would not ahead of the EU referendum.”
“Publishing Chilcot before June 23 would remind people of the lies the country were told about Iraq and how Britain had to get involved and did not have a choice. We have already seen a leaflet sent to every household at a cost of £9.3 million which claimed to be factual about the European Union, but it contained no facts just scaremongering and to no surprise left out important facts about how much money we pay to the European Union each year for membership.”

Getting Involved for Shipley
Shipley MP Philip Davies has spoken more times in the Commons this year than any other MP. He has contributed 438 times in Parliament over the last 12 months, beating second place Kettering MP Philip Hollobone on 397. The 2015-2016 parliamentary year saw Parliament sit for 151 days and pass 24 Bills, meaning Mr Davies spoke in the Commons, whether that is a debate or questioning a minister on local or national issues, an average of three times a day

Mr Davies said: “Speaking in the Commons is a way to get the views and concerns of my constituents across to ministers and departments. I take advantage of all the options open to me to raise issues and problems that need to be tackled in my constituency. I want the Shipley constituency to be actively represented in Parliament and I will continue to work hard to ensure that is the case.”

As a sideline Philip is also the Parliamentary Spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness. I bet he has a bit to say about that as well.

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