Venerable Dreadnought

Well, having spent the last few months dabling with Warhammer 40K bits, I decided that James needed his Venerable Dreadnought painted, so set to it.

Hopefully you will like it.

Nothing too remarkable in the painting - basecoated in Chaos Black, painted in Space Wolves Grey, then highlighted with a mixture of dry brushing and line highlights. The gold is toned down using Sepia Brown, with a highlight of dry brushed Mithril Silver. The purity seals, scrolls etc are Bleached Bone, washed with Sepia Brown to bring out the creases and folds. One trick I have tried is using a very very fine drawing pen for the text on the Purity Seals - way better than trying to paint it!

The only other technique worth mentioning I guess is on the base, where I have used grass tufts from the model railway fraternity rather than dabs of glue and fiddling with static grass.

Anyway, as I say, hope you like it? I have a host of other painting projects on the go for both of us - Orks and Space Marines - a classic father / son combination. How are we supposed to find the time for all this - as well as school sports, homework, jobs...

Red letter day on the Wye?

I was lucky enough the other day to take a day's fishing on the Wye with Bob James and a friend of mine, Howard Mann. Since this was a first for me (barbel fishing that is) I was a touch excited and therefore up at 05:00 to be there for around 09:30 - a 210 plus mile trip each way, so it had better be good...

The trip across to Hereford was simply stunning - okay, it started out a little misty and cold, but as the sun came up, the landscape emerged slowly from the mist and damp to give one of those classic autumnal mornings when you realise that we are all lucky to be alive and on this good earth. Joe Cornish would have been chomping at the photographic bit, so to speak!

Well, back to fishing and Bob put me into a lovely tucked away swim with a nice piece of water in front of me with a good steady push coming through, a deep channel roughly half way across down to about 8 feet deep in the rock bed and a tree-lined far bank. The swim screamed chub and barbel...

I was fishing with my new Grey's X-Flite Barbel rod with the 1.75lb avon top through to 14lb Ultima flourocarbon coated mainline for a bit of abrasion resistance. At the business end we fished a 2 oz Fox open ended mesh feeder on a Fox helicopter rig. The hooklength was an 18 inch length of Fox flourocarbon to a size 10 Fox hook. No prizes here for guessing Bob is a consultant to Fox ;-)

Bait wise, we were using 14mm Richworth KG-1 hair-rigged boilies, with Bob's secret mix of groundbait for the feeder (I saw some crushed hemp, 10mm KG-1 boilies, some 2 or 4mm pellets and some other goodies go in, but could not tell you it all).

I think it was about 10 minutes for the first bite to come through from a nice little barbel of about 4lb or so - my first ever barbel, rod christened and a grin from ear to ear. This is what I had come for, and the day had only just started.

I think we fished for a not very solid (read frequent breaks for a chat, cup of tea, bite to eat etc) seven or so hours, and finished the day with 10 barbel and 10 chub. My biggest barbel took the scales down to a round 9lb, not huge but a great fish for a first time barbel fisherman (and hence its inclusion at the top of this blog). The best chub probably went 4lb or so. Howard topped the day with the largest fish at 9lb 10oz with a cracking barbel from a swim about 100 yards downstream.

The trip back to Kent was mostly in darkness, and that was probably for the best, as all those guys and girls in suits coming back from work would have been seriously concerned by the grinning idiot in the Land Rover.

Well, that was my first real trip to the Wye for barbel - and it won't be my last, that's for sure.

The Wansbeck Piper

The Wansbeck Piper is also known as the last train to West Woodburn on the Wansbeck Valley branch out of Morpeth and Hexham. Serving some of the most remote communities of the Northumbrian hills, it was closed like so many branchlines in October 1966.

Today, there are numerous rumours that someone may try and re-open the line to cater for the increasing timber and tourist traffic out of Kielder, but I can imagine that the road hauliers would have something to say about it as the contract must be a lucrative one and their owners are well placed thee days in the community. The cost of re-instating the line and its numerous bridges would probably be prohibitive anyway.

To give a flavour of what this glorious line was like in all its muddy glory, have a look at this YouTube site:

Why are politicians so two faced?

Okay, so hands up that I am one of the Spawn of Satan - a banker - or that is what the UK government would have you believe.

Fine, I can live with the name calling and whilst I believe that some folks in merry old banker land probably deserve to have certain parts of their anatomy chopped off for what they have been doing over the last ten years, I think they are in the vast minority. Most of us do a very long, hard days work in very very stressful conditions and hopefully make money for our company (and therefore its shareholders, which for most public companies are the pension funds, life insurance funds etc to which we all pay our dues and like to get good returns).

If bankers and senior company executives are expected to have their remuneration linked to their long term performance, then why should the Government be any different?

Okay, so I have little faith in the economic prowess of most government ministers, having met a fair few MPs in my time. I think most mean well but may not have the knowledge and background to really get to grips with what they are being told. However, the people of the country elected them, so they are in power and set the rules.

Fine. So if Mr Brown and Mr Darling think that pumping shed loads of money into the economy and devaluing Sterling is the right way to go, then surely they should put their money where their mouths are and share in the risk alongside everyone else?

Let me explain.

Mr Brown launched the biggest corporate robbery on pension funds, forcing many companies to close their final salary schemes as they became too expensive and onerous. So now we all are on defined contribution schemes where the value of our pension is subject only to the skills of the fund manager and the value of the fund on any given day. Imagine how you would have felt if your pension pot was valued in April this year when the FTSE-100 was at 3,500 or so, compared to over 5,000 now. Pretty crap and pretty poor for the rest of your life. Now, only one or two groups of people are isolated from this situation, including civil servants and by definition MPs, who are still on final salary pensions schemes funded by the taxpayer.

So, to put this in simple terms, the guys and girls who are setting economic policy for the country are not exposed to the consequences of their actions. If they screw up, Sterling plummets, national debt explodes, who cares since they retire and collect a big fat guaranteed pension at the tax payers expense.

Mmmm, seems a little out of kilter with what they are preaching to everyone else, and in particular the banks?

How would you feel if the chief executive and board of directors of your employer told you that they were cutting jobs, cutting pensions, cutting benefits for the workforce but the board was not going to lose any of its benefits? I think we would have a strike on our hands.

When will this government (or indeed any that is seeking to be elected) have the courage to stand up and say "we are all in this together - no one should be immune from the impact of their actions on their future income" and get rid of MPs final salary schemes?

Well, being new to this blog thing, I guess one has to start somewhere, so this is my first blog entry - cue drum roll.

Seriously, I want to try this as the kids are busting for a blog account / MSN / Facebook / etc and I reckon to understand this stuff you need to do it yourself for a while - hence the rather boring start to this blog.

Okay, so what may be on here? Stuff that I am doing with the wife and kids, hobby related things such as rugby, Warhmammer 40k, model railways, gaming, fishing, shooting whatever. So if none of this amuses / interests you, please look away or log out now.

I will also not aim to offend in anything I say, but it may challenge (and please feel free to challenge me and my beliefs) and antagonise - I am a right wing guy but with some social responsibilities and a strong sense of justice.

Well, thanks for looking in.

Cheers

Viking