Steve,
I don’t know when you left the UK but our diet has become much more Mediterranean in the last few years. Lots of great dishes are now dependant on olives (and olive oil) cherry tomatoes and basil – but it is all great fusion with British produce. British food is no longer a joke.
But good news for traditional dishes – many live one, especially as pub grub. In the lakes you will find tattie pot, Cumberland sausage and Yorkshire puddings as big as your plate flooded with gravy. A lot of this fed farmers and miners, now it feeds hungry fell walkers.
I been away to Yorkshire and found Yorkshire curd tart in a tea room – lovely.
Variety is the spice of . . . something.

was it good old English grub we’re talking about here??

What else would you expect? Ambleside has two Chinese, a good Indian, a vegetarian Italian (really good, and with attached cinema) and lots of places for a latte/cappucino/espresso.
Just like the rest of England really. 🙂

Thanks Ken – good stuff

It’s not the right Q: Oswald Short had no say in any of it. Short and Harland Ltd. had been shot-gunned by Minister Swinton 6/36 as part of his shadow system. To liberate Rochester to do Stirling, Sunderland was to be built by shipwrights, as it floated and its wing sat more on a keel than a spar.

Gouge, a former chippie, always said any carpenter or boatbuilder could build a Sunderland. Perhaps optimistic, as proved at Windermere but they did it, eventually.

By late-42 Oswald as businessman had lost the confidence of his customer:

Oswald or Gouge? Oswald Short was bitter towards Arthur Gouge after the war – many years later Short’s letter to the RAeS had to be considerably edited. Gouge was General Manager at Shorts but appears to have been a much better designer than manager – particularly irritating Whitehall mandarins. But Oswald appointed him. Oswald cared for his workers (and paid them too much) even paid for his own air raid shelters – the tunnels in the chalk behind the Seaplane works.

Stirling Prodn Group had “virtually collapsed (makes) no worth-while contribution to our war effort in return for their overheads (should) be a wholesale sacking of the incompetents who have turned out (c)50% rogue a/c from (Harland…

The Board of Trade review of Short Brothers in June 43 sought to find answers to why aircraft cost so much and why output was so low for the size of the labour force – these were the failings of the pre-nationalisation management. Wages were too high for hours worked (Taking home pay but working on 70% hours paid for) and effort put in was too low – and varied too much across the works

The Stirling problems were well known within Shorts – the test pilots drew up a list of complaints in Aug 1942. In Mar 43 three aircraft were produced in two weeks then NINE in the next fortnight to hit a monthly target – but aircraft with faults.

The company’s response to criticism was a document (Feb 43) which started with a list of excuses (Swindon and Airport Works only open one year, 50% of workers recruited within a year) yet they tried to argue that the cost of Stirling matched the Lancaster when cost per ton of bombs was the measure. “Extracting the digit” would have been more effective long term.

The incompetent drunk who ran (Short).” AM Harris to new Minister Cripps 30/12/42, C.Bryant,Stafford Cripps,Hodder,1997,P330.

Francis Short was known to be the drunk – died from drink, but was shoved out of Kent, out of the way. One of his offices was Windermere.

Oswald failed to extricate the digit, so he and his Board were ejected, his firm sequestered. Only himself to blame.

Production increased after the new management (under Heaton) got to grips with the details. If Oswald was to blame, it was in building a management team who understood shipbuilding, not mass production.

What Arthur Gouge was working on, and took with him to Saro, was Shetland:

The Shetland was a joint Saro/Shorts project and designed to be built in sections. Saro designed (and to build) the wings, Shorts the ten sections to make the hull. Gouge (where else could he go?) took ideas with him to Saro. In 1943 Saro (ie Gouge) published the report “The Future of the Flying Boat” to ensure it was included in the post-war civil aircraft plans. Ideas for 200,000lbs flying boats were proposed. He would surely have done that at Shorts, and taken them up the same dead-end as he took Saro.

If Oswald had improved in early-43, as others like Sir Richard Fairey did, staving off nationalisation, his firm would have been destroyed by Shetland, Sturgeon and expired just about when Rochester actually did.

Oswald could diversify when needed – by mid 30s Shorts had built over 5,000 buses, plus many boats, yet we think they are an aircraft company.
The reputation was destroyed pre-Shetland – it started with the Stirling troubles and then the Sunderland IV debacle, ignoring Air Council directives. That’s when the digit got stuck. If the IV and Shetland were on time and had met expectations, who knows – what if’s become too big when you go that far.

Allan

Yes, please share any photos.

Did you have fun sitting out by the slipway trying to imagine new Sunderland flying boats being launched into Windermere – or was it too cold for that?

Allan

Agree with DH Avro and Hawker (more so if you include Sopwith/Hawker, but I wouldn’t). All were able to adapt to the times and changing politics. Sustainability in difficult times is, I would suggest, a sign of a great firm. Bristol engines are a factor to be considered – and Dh too
I would put Vickers higher (and not just for the Spitfire)
If you said pre-WWII then I would include Shorts for pioneering development but they did not sustain that level post war, so I’d leave them in 6th or 7th of your top five.

Interesting to read about the progress with the Skua. They are clearly working hard to get an aircraft on display but I was interested to note this on their website:

The thin plated aluminium structure is . . . corroded in some places and the parts can only be used as patterns for new ones. However, they are important to preserve because there are no drawings for the Skua anywhere and only very few photographs to guide the rebuild.

and

Most of the aluminium rivets are gone but stainless steel bolts as well as aluminium bolts were used were extra strength were needed. These bolts have to be disconnected without damaging the parts. A lot of care has to go into this process. Because the condition of the structure for the most part can only be used as a pattern

… The internal structure of the fin was very much deteriorated and because of this we already have started to copy this structure.

It strikes me that they are building a composite Skua from the parts of L2896 and L2903 and other parts. But I was most interested to note that they seem to be planning to preserve parts that they have copied. Having a reference collection is part of what being a museum is all about and this is to be applauded.

I don’t know about restoring flying aircraft, but perhaps those who do can say what nornally happens to the left over non-airworthy original material. Is it routinely kept but made available for research, is it locked away out of sight (but preserved) or is it destroyed?

I can understand that owners of valuable aircraft must protect their investment from possible “identity duplication” for want of a better phrase, but is the fault that the regulators have no alternative to the present system which demands an historic identity?

It is time, for the sake of preserving original material, for the regulatory framework to be adapted?

Allan

Very insensitive – and potentially bad marketing. Such things can backfire if the customers decide they like mountaineering legends more than pizza. It would put me off buying their products, but maybe I’m not their target group.

Poor taste, yes…..and bad publicity…..but as there is no such thing as bad publicity,

I was running publicity for tourism in the Lake District when the Foot and Mouth crisis hit so I’ll take issue with you about this – another day though 🙂

There seems to be a lot of this around at the moment.

Yes, and in the past too. Shock marketing to raise awareness is not new. It is aimed at creating viral campaigns, in the old days it was called “word of mouth”. Shock tactics involve dark campaigns such as this, those touching on sexual issues – can you think of a company caled Naked? There’s several.
Even Virgin – although their branding has now transcended the shock and now the word sucessfully refers to both sexual innocence and a youthful, fun and diverse global business.
I still think e-mail addresses such as Joe.bloggs@virgin.net are a bit odd, when Joe is a grandfather.