Month: October 2022

Law

Family Courts

The Family Courts deal with the acrimonious aspects of domestic strife. The judges and lawyers deal with matters that are very sensitive […]

The Family Courts deal with the acrimonious aspects of domestic strife. The judges and lawyers deal with matters that are very sensitive and emotional for those individuals involved who, if present, must try to stay calm and dignified during the proceedings. These are more informal than other court proceedings, with no jury, dock, black robes or wigs. Cases are brought to the Family Court which fall under the following laws:-

Marriage Act 1949
Matrimonial Causes Act 1973
Child Abduction and Custody Act 1985
Children Act 1989
Family Law Act 1996
Adoption and Children Act 2002
Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013
Domestic Abuse Act 2021

Some cases are classed as “public”, whereby the State (in the form of local authorities, social workers, doctors, police, etc.) is against an individual, usually a parent or parents, and the child or children can be taken away, if only temporarily, to live with foster parents or a member of their extended family. A “private” case is where two individuals are in dispute with each other over, for example, property division or child custody.

As no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors, the truth of accusations is taken on the balance of probabilities.

(Image: pxhere.com)

31/10/2022
3 min
2 years
204 words

Inventions

The adjustable spanner

For Yorkshireman Richard Clyburn (1796/7-1852) to become a consulting engineer in his early 30s, he must have shown impressive manual, technical and […]

For Yorkshireman Richard Clyburn (1796/7-1852) to become a consulting engineer in his early 30s, he must have shown impressive manual, technical and design skills early in life. He had moved down to Gloucestershire and went on to become a partner at Uley Iron Works, manufacturing tools with replaceable parts. The business was then purchased by Henry Reynolds-Moreton, the Earl of Ducie (1802-53) in order to produce new, efficient tools and machinery for his modernised farm.

Another talented engineer there was Edwin Beard Budding (1796-1846), the inventor of the lawnmower. The Earl, Budding and Clyburn worked together to successfully produce a newfangled chaff-cutter, among other implements. Clyburn alone, however, is credited with inventing the adjustable spanner, in 1842 and registering the patent in 1843. This saved time and space, since it replaced the need to select from a whole array of differently-sized fixed spanners. Today it also overcomes the problem of there being two measurement codes ~ imperial and metric.

*Image of modern compact toolkit with adjustable spanner (L): pxhere.com*

The rack-and-worm ‘Clyburn spanner’ was available right up to the early 1960s and came in various lengths from 6″ to 24″. The featured photographs show the two styles ~ curved and ‘straight’. The vintage spanner below the drawing is not confirmed as a Clyburn but it is the right shape.

(Top images (top to bottom): 1871 drawing of Clyburn’s curved spanner in Spon’s via Internet Archive Book Images / Public domain & pszz at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

30/10/2022
4 min
2 years
241 words

History

Kindertransport

The scheme to remove children under 17 from their homes in pre-WW2 Nazi Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia and bring them to […]

The scheme to remove children under 17 from their homes in pre-WW2 Nazi Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia and bring them to safety in England was later known as ‘Kindertransport’. It was arranged by charity refugee organisations, funded and assisted by the Briish public and legally ratified by Parliament in Westminster. Approximately 10,000 children immigrated in this way from November 1938 to September 1939, most of them Jewish, some from orphanages. The Government’s relaxation of visa rules was intended to be temporary, with the children re-emigrating at age 18. This changed with the outbreak of war.

The operation, being hurried and unregulated, lacked much of the safeguarding one would expect, but many foster families came forward in response to national appeals. Jewish practices were usually unknown in the children’s new surroundings, which was confusing for those accustomed to them back home.

The Kindertransport principle was entirely altruistic in its motives, yet appalling in its process. The normal development of those young lives was completely disrupted and who knows what extraordinary emotions the parents went through. Apparently most of them were killed by the Nazis. After the War, some of the children settled in Britain while others went to live in the newly-formed state of Israel.

(Image of memorial sculpture at the London station where the children arrived: Steve Daniels at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

28/10/2022
3 min
2 years
222 words

Geography & Environment

UK fishing waters

For centuries British fishermen went wherever they knew they could get a plentiful catch and top of the list for many were […]

For centuries British fishermen went wherever they knew they could get a plentiful catch and top of the list for many were the waters around Iceland. However, three vicious ‘cod wars’ between Icelandic and British trawlers broke out between 1958 and 1976 when consumer demand was increasing. Finally, Iceland declared a 12-nautical-mile (nmi.) territorial zone round its coastline and a 200nmi. Icelandic rights zone. The former meant that the first 12nmi. (calculated from low-water mark outwards) came under Icelandic ownership, while the latter meant that permission had to be sought to fish or conduct any other type of economic activity between 12nmi. and 212nmi. distance from the Icelandic shores.

The UK decided to reciprocate for its own waters, since Iceland’s action greatly impacted the British fishing industry. Beginning with the Fishery Limits Act of 1964, a series of laws have been passed which proclaim this same 12nmi. territorial encirclement and a 200nmi. Exclusive Economic Zone, as delineated in pink on the simplified map below:-

*Image [line added around Channel Islands]: Liam Mason at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0*

Abutting the eastern and southern zones are the areas claimed by Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. On the west and north are those of Ireland and Denmark again via its territory of the Faroe Islands.

(Top image: (Mick Baker)rooster at Flickr.com / CC BY-ND 2.0)

27/10/2022
3 min
2 years
224 words

Entertainment

Supertramp

“Oh won’t you sign up your name We’d like to feel you’re acceptable Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable” ~ The Logical Song […]

“Oh won’t you sign up your name
We’d like to feel you’re acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable” ~ The Logical Song (1979)

These lyrics came from the adolescent recollections of Roger Hodgson (1951-), co-founder of rock band Supertramp, which he formed in 1969 with Rick Davies (1944-), both from southern England. It was one of their most successful singles along with classics such as ‘Dreamer’ (1974), ‘Give a Little Bit’ (1977),‘Take the Long Way Home’ (1979) and ‘It’s Raining Again’ (1982).

The worldwide sales of their 20 albums and 28 singles number in the millions, with their 1979 LP ‘Breakfast in America’ being the outstanding peak of their careers. The other band members during Supertramp’s heyday were Glaswegian Dougie Thomson (1951-) on bass, Yorkshireman John Helliwell (1945-) on saxophone and clarinet, and their only American, Bob Siebenberg (1944-) on drums and percussion. Hodgson, Davies and Helliwell all played the electric piano which was such an important part of the Supertramp sound. Hodgson wrote most of the songs, though Davies also contributed.

Hodgson left Supertramp in 1983 and the band split up in 1988. There was a partial re-formation for two more studio albums, in 1997 and 2002, but aside from the odd tour with different line-ups, Supertramp has taken its auspicious resting place in rock’s history books.

(Top image of ‘Breakfast in America’ LP cover: Joe Haupt at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

12/10/2022
3 min
2 years
226 words

English language

P.G. Wodehouse

Sir P.G. (Pelham Grenville, nicknamed ‘Plum’) Wodehouse (1881-1975), from Surrey, became one of Britain’s best-loved and most accomplished writers. His literary genius […]

Sir P.G. (Pelham Grenville, nicknamed ‘Plum’) Wodehouse (1881-1975), from Surrey, became one of Britain’s best-loved and most accomplished writers. His literary genius produced unique comic imagery, e.g. “It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away”.

Of his success in New York and later Hollywood, where he co-wrote scripts and lyrics, he said: “A writer in America at that time who went about without three names was practically going about naked”, wittily conveying his own providential advantage. He wrote constantly, up to his dying day, and published 96 books, many with ongoing, never-ageing characters such as Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. With this pairing Wodehouse revelled in portraying a kind of role reversal, the valet being much more clever, well-read and strategically-minded than his trouble-prone upper-class employer.

Wodehouse delighted in setting all his stories in the Edwardian era of his young adulthood, pre-WW1, in a golden age of a class structure just about to loosen up. His female characters always held their own and romantic liaisons were easily entered into. That settled, Wodehouse would then take the reader on a farcical adventure that always ended cheerfully.

(Top images L to R [cropped]: Adam Bowie at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 & Bradford Timeline at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)

05/10/2022
3 min
2 years
224 words

Discoveries

Dinosauria

The first dinosaur bone to be identified as such, albeit 166 years later, was dug up in 1676 on Sir Thomas Pennyston’s […]

The first dinosaur bone to be identified as such, albeit 166 years later, was dug up in 1676 on Sir Thomas Pennyston’s Oxfordshire estate and given by him to Professor Robert Plot (1640-96) at the University of Oxford. Plot included a drawing of the giant thigh bone in ‘The Natural History of Oxfordshire’ which he published in 1677. He imagined it to be human but it was later claimed to belong to a megalosaurus (‘the great fossil lizard’), a name invented by Dr. William Buckland (1784-1855/6) also at the University of Oxford.

The extraordinary finds of Mary Anning (1799-1847) on part of the 95-mile Jurassic coastline stretching from Devon to Dorset, including whole skeletons of ichthyosaurs, inspired enormous interest in fossil-hunting, even though it was seen as controversial in theological circles.

Lancashire-born Sir Richard Owen (1804-92) devised the name ‘dinosauria‘ (‘terrible lizards’), commonly called dinosaurs, in 1842, to classify the growing number of extinct species of mostly large reptiles and birds. There are many dinosaur museums around the UK, including the Mary Anning Wing of Lyme Regis Museum, but perhaps the most famous is London’s Natural History Museum with its dinosaur gallery. From 1979 to 2017 a replica of ‘Dippy’ the diplodocus was the first sight on entering the building.

(Image of a mantellisaurus skeleton named after Sussex-born Gideon Mantell (1790-1852): bryan at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

01/10/2022
3 min
2 years
223 words

Quoting Neil Oliver...

I love Britain more than anywhere else in the world. With all my heart I declare that those of us born here, or who have made a home here by choice, are the luckiest, most blessed of all people. I am British. I will always be British.