Pesky Government Announcement!

'Appen so, Peter lad, 'appen so. All my old stomping grounds.

Ah well, they can never take away our memories can they? I'm going to digress a bit.. into the subject of music. The link song was written in the days when there was quite a bit of lead flying about in forrin parts..today we have the virus war to bother all of us, but this tune just might give a bit of hope:

BTW the lady backing singer was Mary Hopkin... remember her?

youtube,com/watch?v=A9tIJEywB4g 

(Peace will come)

Edited By 10ba12ba on 18/06/2020 12:59:29

Long blonde hair as I recall. Probably a true soprano as well with that high pitched voice.

.

Forgive me, Dave ... Perhaps I have missed some amazing leap in technology, but:

Lossless MP3 seems like an oxymoron

... or is the advert poorly written ?

MichaelG.

If like me you're high frequency hearing is rapidly disappearing down the plug, HiFi is a bit of a waste of time (and money). What I need is an inverse Dolby circuit to boost the high frequencies and leave them there. I think this is what my hearing aids do (otherwise known as tin lugs), but most of the time I don't bother with them as if I can see whoever is speaking I can understand (lip reading?). Old films are good because actors back then enunciated, not like modern dramas where they mumble all the time

It's not all bad, in fact I reckon it's a male survival tactic, women tend to have higher pitched voices!

Edited By duncan webster on 18/06/2020 16:07:02

Ah, audio adverts!!! Completely trustworthy...

Dave

To give them the benefit of the doubt, Dave ... I did wonder if they had inadvertently omitted the punctuation

RUIZU New Evodigitals Black 8GB Lossless HD Sound MP3 MP4 Player Music Video FM Tuner

Should perhaps read something like:

RUIZU New Evodigitals : Black 8GB

Lossless / HD Sound / MP3 / MP4

Player

Music : Video : FM Tuner

.

Do you have a proper spec for it ?

MichaelG.

Attended Elland Grammar School.

Wasn't familar with that school, so looked it up Found that I did know it after all, but it has been known as Brooksbank Comprehensive for as long as I have been aware of it - my sister went there for the last couple of years of her education & I passed it every day on my commute to my previous employer (when I was in the works) at Holywell Green.

Tuel Lane in Sowerby Bridge was part of the commute to Broadbents in Mytholmroyd from Rastrick for 15 months or so until redundancy stopped play. Boxford's "new" premises are a right turn towards Halifax at the top of Tuel Lane.

Nigel B.

(born in Hudderfield, brought up in Rastrick & ex- Rastrick Grammar School)

Nigel B,

Elland Grammar School changed to Brooksbank Comprehensive in the 1960's. Both my brother and sister attended the comprehensive leaving in 1968 & 1972 respectively.

Rastrick Grammar. I've a feeling that a forerunner was Rastrick Central School or something similar. If I'm right, then there is a good chance that my mother attended that school leaving with Matriculation Certificates in 1936.

What works were those at Holywell Green? It's possible I may have known people in the same works - Arthur Edwards (I think), Leslie Stewart. Or was it the mills near the bottom of Burwood Hill? The only other works I can think of was Photo-Multo just below Holywell Green School on the opposite side. owned & run by T. Phillips Lealand. My mother worked there for a few years in the office.

I always remember Tuel Lane because way back when, it was famous for runaway vehicles, and I have a memory of the mill, if it still exists, across the bottom of Tuel Lane on the opposite side with new bricks where the old ones had been demolished. And when I started at Elland, I learned the verb "tuer" - to kill, and I often wondered if that was where Tuel Lane got it's name.

Also new Huddersfield & its surrounding area quite well. This was in the early 1960's. From what I see on the news, I don't think I would want to go back now.

Peter.

Rastrick Grammar. I've a feeling that a forerunner was Rastrick Central School or something similar. If I'm right, then there is a good chance that my mother attended that school leaving with Matriculation Certificates in 1936.

Rastrick Grammar School was independant & very old, tracing it's roots to a school started by the local St. Mathews church in the 1300s & it is unlikely that your mother attended there, as it was a single sex boys school. It "went" in the mid-80s, merged with a local comprehensive school to become Rastrick High School. The local single sex girls equivalent was Brighouse Girls Grammar, my wife being one of the pupils there. That, too, closed in a re-organisation & the premises are now retirement appartments. There was also Rastrick Secondary Modern School, know locally as "Rastrick Common", as that is where it was sited. That is where you went if you didn't pass the 11 Plus.

You would not know the place I used to work, as their premises were purpose built on a new industrial estate started in the mid-80s. It was on farm land, with access shared with an established chemical works nearby (variously Hoechst or Union Carbide - don't know what they made). The land was on the left as you drove from West Vale up the hill towards Holywell Green centre, opposite the golf course. The land had been a steepish sided valley & it was levelled with ash from the former Elland coal fired power station (long demolished & that site now also being an extensive industrial estate, one of the tenants being Mitutoyo) - that stuff had very poor load-bearing properties & made necessary some very heavy-duty foundations for the 20 Tonne gantry crane in the works. The floor was 600 mm thick concrete.

Huddersfield isn't too bad a place, though it is not the place it used to be. Local politicians don't help, with some rather strange priorities to waste money on while ignoring the basics & the town centre is struggling as many are. As with many towns around Leeds, it is viewed now as being dormatory space within the "Leeds City Region". All part of the "Northern Powerhouse" carp that the politicians spout about that is making life a lot less pleasant around here. A move to somewhere quieter to retire has a lot of attractions !

Nigel B.

Maybe I have missed something, but am I the only one that uses a wind up gramophone and sometimes headphones and a cat's whisker?

I really enjoy winding up the whirly thing and doing a smidget of engineering whilst it runs down.

Nigel B.,

In a way you are right in that without questioning my brother & sister I can't remember which of the Rastrick schools she attended although "Common" seems to ring a bell. Given the importance she placed on me passing the scholarship exam, as it was then, together with certain other facts we've found out since her death about our mother's early life, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that was where she went, but carefully omitting to say that it was a Secondary Modern. Unless it changed it's name at some point. Also, given that mother, despite the much vaunted Matriculation, was a shorthand/typist doing office work, that also perhaps points possibly to a Sec.Mod. education. And yet, I know she studied mathematics, French & possibly German and as far as I know Shakespeare which suggests English Literature. Maybe it was Brighouse Girls grammar. Right, you've done it now, an email to my sister who is most likely to know.

You are right about not knowing the new industrial estate: I haven't been up Burrwood Hill since 2005 when my parents died, and before that probably 1997 or 98 which was when I went looking for my deceased brother's grave. And before that? Let's just say that my parents moved to Elland in 1966; I left Elland to live at Bradford in 1971, and left Bradford for West Cumbria in 1995. Which makes for a lot of old, but not necessarily accurate, memories.

Peter g. Shaw

Although I am not familiar with the area, mention of Brighouse and Rastrick brings us neatly back to the topic of music in the workshop !
DaveD

Can I ask a related question? Re the removal of broadcast hardware and software to nullify paying the licence fee.

Long ago we used to have adverts about the TV detector van coming round and catching out unwary women who had not bought a licence (I never dealt with a summons s for a man, always the poor woman of the house).

I also never saw any evidence adduced that they had been caught by said TV detector van.

So was it, as I suspect, an enormous state generated lie?

I can understand radio transmissions being detectable as the opposing sides did in WW2 to locate spies using triangulation.

But I could never see how anyone could use technology to discover I was watching Poldark, in the back room on BBC 2.

Is it just me or were we subject to a fake news campaign to ensure we coughed up every year. Maybe a freedom of information request would work.

Please settle this mystery for my non radio based brain.

Mick

I have heard (although it could be a load of BS) that advanced technology means that hand held detectors have replaced the detector van. Don't know how they would check stuff coming via the internet.

Thanks Frances, looking thru the window was my theory coupled with the presence of an aerial on the chimney pot.

I never did see a TV detector van despite being told they were in my area NOW!

But I never saw an elephant fly either.

Mick

Edited By Frances IoM on 20/06/2020 09:43:16

It's both! I've been a radio amateur since my schooldays and knew several like minded hams working for the GPO, later BT. In the early 1970s I spent a day cruising the streets in a detector van with it's distinctive cone antenna. At that time it was a fake; the van was stripped of equipment and drove round empty to create the impression unlicensed TVs were being detected. In that role, quite effective apparently - more TV licences were bought whenever the van was in town.

Originally the vans actually did detect television sets. Most radio receivers, including TVs, work on the superhet principle, in which a local oscillator is used to convert the incoming high frequency signal into something more manageable. As the local oscillator is a small radio transmitter, it can be detected some distance away from the receiver, and it reveals what channel the set is tuned to. Detector vans worked well with 405 line VHF TV because the old sets used valves (more power) and long internal wiring that helped radiate the signal. The vans were much less effective detecting transistorised UHF TVs because the local oscillator was less powerful and on a printed circuit board with short tracks. The give-away signal was much weaker. Another downside was the cost. Fully working vans contained expensive calibrated equipment and a three-man crew. It was realised fairly quickly that the psychological effect of detector vans achieved far more than nailing a few naughty individuals.

Policing was tackled in other ways later. For about 40 years when a new TV was bought the purchase was reported and a computer used to confirm the address owned a TV licence. If not, a reminder would be sent and - if ignored - a team would call, who would prosecute if an unlicensed TV was found. Today, the assumption is that all households must have a TV and any residential address without a licence is liable to visited. It's a simple job for a computer. It can be very unfair - I know at least two people who who are persistently pestered by the authorities because they deliberately don't own a TV. On the other hand I've no sympathy for licence dodgers. Student Accommodation is a hot-bed of crime!

Dave

I haven't had a TV for about 25 years now and used to get a constant stream of letters from the TV Licensing 'thugs'. I did get a note shoved through the letterbox one night saying that the TV detector vans had been in my area and if I had been caught using a TV then I would have been prosecuted. Good luck to them as they wouldn't have caught me using one anyway! They would have a job spotting the TV aerial as it fell off the chimney about 10 years ago!

I think they have finally given up harassing me and now I just have to 'sign' an online declaration every two years to say that I still do not need a licence.

I did use to watch BBC Iplayer occasionally on the computer until they decided a few years ago that you need a license to watch that so I don't even bother with that now. I don't think that I am missing anything. There's plenty of far more interesting stuff to watch on YouTube if I get bored.

John