A Battle

A friend of mine from primary and grammar school died the week before last of cancer. His obituary, similar to others who have died of cancer, mentions his 'brave battle against cancer'.

I find it strange how one battles cancer, but not diabetes, kidney failure, Alzheimer's or any other of the myriad diseases that can carry us off.

How does one actually battle cancer? As far as I can see, you take your medication and hope for the best, just like any other disease. Is there anything particularly brave about it?

Granted that the treatment can involve taking you as close to death as possible without killing you, but so do the treatments for many diseases. It's not brave - it's the only course of action available to you if you want a chance of living longer.

We say people "fight cancer" or "lose their battle" with it. This hideously frames cancer as an enemy and the patient as a warrior. Research suggests these metaphors can be harmful. They might make patients feel like they have to fight super hard or blame themselves if the outcome isn't positive.

Over the Top?

Hay seems to think my idea of veneering the wood burner logs with burr walnut is going somewhat over the top. 

She simply doesn't understand art.... After my success with the dash panel I am curiously overcome with a desire to veneer everything in sight.

I have found the Triumph GT6 forum on Facebook to be invaluable. You can ask any question and you'll be bombarded with answers, some of them utterly mad, but many very creative.

Here's a couple of photos from a bloke who covered his dashboard top in red leather and the fascia in grey leather.

His GT6 is red, so it works wonderfully.

Guess what I found in my garage while tidying things up?

Walnut coloured leatherette with a felt backing! I bought it when I made a heat-resistant topper for our previous dining table. This offcut is too small to do the entire top of the dash, but I could easily get some more, giving it a thin foam backing to bring about the correct profile contours. It would go well with both the walnut veneered dash and the opalescent golden sand I'm intending to spray the car in.

A New Project

I really need doors on my new garage. Not just for warmth, but protection from the rain when the wind is in the wrong direction. I'll certainly need it for spraying the GT6 with some coats of primer.

Found this simple and yet elegant solution on YouTube.

OSB is relatively cheap, but plywood is lighter and stronger for the same thickness. It's also less prone to warping, so I'd prefer to use ply. I would probably face it with composite cladding in grey, to match the colour of the garage's oak cladding and provide weather protection. 

Perspex windows at the top would be beneficial for light, but not at the cost of strength or water integrity - any lips would allow rainwater to pool on the lip and possibly get into the ply. 

Not sure whether to do it myself or contract our tame builder, Colin, to do it. Knowing my wood butchery skills, Colin would probably be the better bet. He's a practitioner of the 'measure 3 times before cutting' school of woodworkology, whereas I go more by the 'well, it looks about right' school.

A job for summer.

Rwanda Flights

 So Sunak blames Labour Lords for the delay to the Rwanda Bill.

Based on the number of Tory Lords versus the Labour Lords he's either lying or doesn't have a clue about the real world.

So flights will take off in July. I doubt than very much because of a thing called UK law and that airlines have been told that if they participate they will he held accountable in International Law. 

What it possibly does signify is a General Election just before the flights are meant to take off.

He's obviously aiming to stem the drift of numbskulls to Reform, hoping they'll vote Tory before they find out that not a single flight will take off. It's a tactic to retain a handful of seats.

However, Nigel Fuhrage has responded by telling his knuckle draggers that he also thinks there won't be a single flight, but fails to provide his Final Solution to the issue.

PACE

This situation with Gideon Falter, Chief Executive (some say Chairman) of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, whiffs to me of a setup and artifice. The fact Suella Braverman is echoing his call for Sir Mark Rowley to resign makes it doubly so. She's one of those faux Conservatives who believe government should be able to break the law to achieve its aims, so I can't trust a word she says and suspect her motives.

I heard an interview with Falter yesterday where he said he wasn't wearing a badge or anything indicating he was Jewish. He was wearing a kippah, for heaven's sake. Unless one is Orthodox, the kippah is usually only worn in a synagogue, not when walking the streets. The man is an activist and therefore has an agenda and his organisation has openly stated it the protest marches banned. He also has previous for antagonising protesters. He wanted to be identified as jewish.

He was walking across a pro-Palestine demonstration - a demonstration which, while peaceful, has elements within it which are anti-Semitic. Falter was potentially placing himself in danger. The protest, at the time, however, was peaceful and lawful.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984) allows a constable to arrest someone without a warrant if they have reasonable grounds to believe that arrest is necessary for one of several reasons, and being a danger to themselves is one of these.

Falter, during his interview on the radio, said that a black person walking in front of an EDL protests wouldn't have been similarly arrested. However, they would if there was a risk of a situation kicking off and that black person refused to obey a police request to get away from the area. It's far easier to take someone into protective custody than to tackle a crowd with limited numbers of police, which might lead to injuries or even deaths.

Strangely enough, we've become addicted to a Radio 4 comedy series called It's A Fair Cop, where a former police sergeant, Alfie Moore, does a hilarious comedy routine based on actual cases he's been involved with, changing the names, obviously. He polls his audience on what they would do in certain situations and one of his cases, which we listened to last week, was startlingly similar to this situation. The vast majority of the audience said they would not have arrested the person in his historic case, whereas he did, and he quoted the relevant section of PACE that allowed him to do so.

In 2017, 250 academics complained of the Israel lobby’s repeated attempts to link academic criticism of Israel, and support for the Palestinian people, with anti-semitism. These moves were “outrageous interferences with free expression” and “direct attacks on academic freedom”. The group said “we wish to express our dismay at this attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel, including its violation of the rights of Palestinians for more than 50 years. It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel under the thin disguise of concern about anti-semitism”

In January 2015, the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism wrote: "We were somewhat disappointed to note that not all of the messages from that group (CAA) have been in line with CST's stated approach of seeking to avoid undue panic and alarm." They added "it is important that the leadership do not conflate concerns about activity legitimately protesting Israel's actions with anti-Semitism, as we have seen has been the case on some occasions."

Since 2017, Falter has been on the Executive Board of the Jewish National Fund. JNF UK claims to be "the UK’s leading humanitarian and environmental Israel charity, raising funds for the building blocks of everyday life in Israel such as reservoirs, irrigation systems, desalination plants, forest planting, recycling schemes, roads, housing and healthcare centres." It is the UK wing of the Jewish National Fund, which has been described by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe as "a colonialist agency of ethnic cleansing". The JNF supports Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

There are elements who want the Gaza protests banned. Braverman is one of them and she will do anything the Israeli government wants. If Braverman is involved, indeed any Conservative, then I smell a rat. In his radio interview, Falter called the protesters a lawless mob, which it wasn't.

Yes, anyone should be free to walk London's streets without fear, but there are circumstances under which that could give cause for concern among those charged with maintaining the peace. Maintaining the peace is sometimes more important than an individual's rights, which is why PACE contains that section. You are not free to walk the streets if the circumstances under which you do so could cause a breach of the peace that the police cannot handle, especially if you have an agenda.

I think some activists are not doing the Jews any favours and it won't be long before the term 'playing the anti-Semitism card' will be as used as often as 'playing the race card' is. The police have an unenviable job and have my full support in this instance. Imagine if someone unknown to the police had run out from the crowd and stabbed Falter - he'd be dead and complaining even louder.

Contrasts

The burr walnut vinyl has arrived from China. Yuk!

There's no match whatsoever with the dash fascia I veneered and so I'm either going to have to veneer the dash top or else find another solution. 

I am tempted to go for leather in the same colour as the seats will be, which is either brown or beige.

Israel vs Iran & Government Nomenclature

Seems to me that the Israelis and Iranians are quite sensibly scaling down each tit-for-tat retaliatory action. It won't be long before they're exchanging paper planes, or simply calling each other names.

A lot of commentators are making much of the fact the Iranians could overwhelm Iron Dome with low cost drones, retaining the more expensive and highly destructive stuff for once Iron Dome runs out of ammo, which is estimated to be after 5 days of constant attacks. However, it's not as simple as that - Israel still have the upper hand, as it could nuke Tehran on day 4.

In another story, not content with changing the definition of an unsafe country into a safe country, legal immigrants (aka refugees) into illegal immigrants, they're now redefining the meaning of long term sick to fit for work, with political commissars in the DWP making the decisions, who will be set targets of the number of people who they have to force into work, regardless of their actual condition, rather than people who actually know about illnesses. Not only that, but using the numbers they're bandying about, they're redefining economically inactive, which means a host of things (including early retirement), as long term sick. One wonders, given the Parliamentary Tory Party's sleaze problem, when they'll change the definition of fraud to entrepreneurialism.

You know there's a crime called wasting police time? I think there should be another for governments - wasting the public's time. This government is not Conservative - they're ghouls wearing the clothes of true Conservatives and have hi-jacked the Conservative Party.

Chassis Front

Thought I'd tackle the front of the chassis where various critical bits required to mount the bonnet and protect the wheels in a crash had been cut off my the previous owner.

My original thought was to cut off the chassis rails and weld on the complete replacement section I'd purchased, but lengthening or shortening the chassis by even the slightest amount would result in enormous problems when fitting the bonnet, and welding on the complete section would be permanent.

I decided instead to simply remove the front crossmember that is attached to the car's chassis rails, replacing it with the same section from the replacement which has all the missing bits. This would require a bit of easy cutting on the car, but some very difficult cutting on the replacement section's chassis rails, as there were bits that are very hard to reach with a disc cutter.

The theory was that I would be able to tack the replacement crossmember (with attached bonnet hinge boxes) to the car's chassis rails when fitting the bonnet, facilitating minute adjustment in the instance of the positioning being slightly out. You can see in the photo below what's replacing what.

The old cross member came off without too much trouble, as access was easy for the disc cutter.

I removed the blanks that had been welded over the ends of the chassis rails, noting that someone had filled the rails with an anti-corrosion compound, which is why the chassis looks quite good. Having the ends open will facilitate a flush through and replacement of the anti-corrosion with something newer.

When it came to the replacement section I started with the cutting disc to remove the chassis rails, but eventually had to resort to my electric axe (plasma cutter), as I couldn't get the disc cutter between the branching arms of the chassis rails.

I knew I'd find a use for the plasma cutter eventually. It's a bit of a blunt instrument in my hands, but I dare say that with a bit of practice I'd be able to effect neat cuts; however, neat cuts weren't a requirement in this instance, as cutting and grinding with a disc would be required anyway to fair up the ends.

Once I'd finished the replacement I offered it up to the chassis rails, but it wouldn't go over them. Had a bit of a think and realised I hadn't ground the old crossmember remains from under the chassis rails, so it was no wonder the new crossmember wouldn't go over the rails. I, did a bit more cutting, grinding and air-chiseling and it finally fitted.

It's not perfect and there's still a bit of metal bending and gentle encouragement with a mallet before it fits like a glove, but I'm very happy with the result so far.

Having completed the job over a couple of days, I still can't help but think it might have been easier to simply remove the hinge boxes and outriggers from the new section and weld them to the stubs of the old chassis. That said, the method chosen does allow more fiddle room when finally fitting the bonnet.

It's interesting to note that two new bonnet hinges would have cost me £250, whereas the 2nd hand section I bought was £75, so I saved a packet and it only cost me my own free time. The outrigger aren't even available as separate items.

Trumpism

Arizona Republican Representative, Andy Briggs, who for some reason is a Trump supporter, said; "If they can come for Trump, then they can come for everyone." I don't think he really understood the truth of what he said.

Isn't that what happens when you're accused of committing a crime? Stating the bleeding obvious, innit, and it's exactly the point of the law.

What he missed out is that if they can come for you, then they should also be able to come for the an ex, or even sitting President, if accused of a crime. Reality is a bit more nuanced, as there are exceptions.

Smoking Ban, Prayer Ban & a Stormy in a teacup

Before I go into my three for one - I discovered why I was scammed by Kwik-Fit - they automatically charge for light bulb fitting, even if they don't fit them. The computer does it automatically.

The proposed smoking ban is in the news. While smoking is definitely a public health issue, there's one argument against the ban that I have not heard anyone articulate thus far.

Smoking nets £10.4bn in tax revenue, which represents 1% of all tax revenue. It's estimated smoking costs the NHS some £2.4bn per annum. It's therefore clear that smoking more than pays for the cost. However, this is not the issue.

If smoking were to be banned, the £10.4bn tax revenue would need to be raised through some other mechanism. The problem is that such a mechanism would probably involve everyone paying for it, whereas currently only smokers pay the tobacco tax.

VAT brings in £162.2bn, which is 15.3% of all tax revenue. To increase VAT by £10.4bn means VAT going up by 6.41%. Sobering, isn't it?

On another tack, A Muslim pupil at a school has lost her case for having prayer rituals. Keep religion out of schools. While not attending a prayer meeting is of no consequence among white british pupils, not attending a prayer meeting if you're a Muslim could lead to problems for you and your family from other Muslims, so it's highly divisive.

However, the fact Suella Braveram has defended the school head makes me want to support the pupil. I just can't believe I'm agreeing with Suella - about anything.

So Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels and allegedly paid her hush money.

What surprises me most is that she didn't pay him hush money. Who would actually want to be associated with the cretin?

On a more serious note, can anyone ever be truly impartial when it comes to high profile individuals? Trump challenges a lot of deeply held beliefs, such as ethics and morality for a start.

Perhaps we just have to accept that bias is part and parcel of choosing to be a high profile individual who is not averse to making his or her opinions and beliefs very visible. Make it your business to become high profile and the quid pro quo is that impartiality goes out of the window in a court of law - your choice.