A red dot in a sea of blue

Ah the pleasures and agonies of rearranging the electoral boundaries! This week has seen proposals to cut fifty seats from the House of Commons, that's MPs voting for fifty redundancies ... well I'll wait while you get over your sniggering fit. 

As far as I'm concerned if it goes ahead Cottingham and a few other outlying villages move from the safe, nay possibly the safest, Tory seat in the country to a proposed marginal seat of West Hull and Haltemprice (where or what is a Haltemprice? I've no idea!) West Hull at present is a totally safe Labour fiefdom (you see the method behind this, create a marginal, lose a safe Labour seat but keep the remains of a safe Tory seat, most excellent!). It also means that Hull may become a smaller red dot in a sea of blue which may be no bad thing. There are the delicious howlings of the self-serving gerrymandered and hopefully soon to be out-of-a-job politicos. I'm not that bothered really they can try living on the pittance of unemployment benefit they voted for, except they'll all have cushy little consultancy positions waiting for them. Does my contempt for politics and all politicians look big in this? 

A small concern is it could be the first move to take over the outlying villages and plonk them in with Hull City Council (just for neatness dontcha know) something that 96% voted against only two years ago.

Paint it black

You might think that being in the unfortunate position of having to board up a window to protect it from hoopleheads and gopniki that you had done enough to safeguard your property. You might think that but you would be making the rookie mistake of forgetting the petty pen pushers who work for the Council's Environmental Crime Unit (a group of mendacious ninnies who pick on the poorest and ignore the rich, t'was ever thus). They will sooner or later come upon your works and inform you that this is far from adequate; you must "Paint it black" or face an enforcement order so to do! Yes a good lick of black gloss it seems is the sine qua non of window protection.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Every Third Sunday

This upcoming Sunday is also this year's Hull Marathon and streets are to be closed so joggers can recreate the ancient Athenian postal service. Let's hope they've measured the course properly this time unlike a few years back. 

Keep to the straight and narrow

Not much chance of doing anything else on this footpath from Albert Dock.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world ...

... this must one of the strangest. For some reason the Minerva has sprouted a mobile Gin Bar. Clearly things are beginning to improve in the city of culture.

A pretty Pickle

Came across this little ship in the Marina today. This is the schooner Pickle and it claims to be a replica or reconstruction of HMS Pickle which brought the first news of the Battle of  Trafalgar back to Falmouth in 1805. In fact this ship was built in 1995 in Russia along with several other similar craft to commemorate the creation of Peter the Great's navy some 300 years ago. Back then it was known as the Alevtina Tuy. Then in 2004 or thereabouts it was further altered to take on a role as HM Schooner Pickle to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of Trafalgar. It was left going to rot in Gibraltar until it was recently bought and rescued by a local businessman. Anyhow for the moment it is now sitting in Hull Marina and you can have a guided trip round it for a fiver should you wish.

Here's a link to a video which is part of a BBC program Boats that Built Britain showing just what a craft like this could do.

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