Deeds not Words.
Well, it seems to have been a month of political upheaval, with many MP’s having their spending habits laid bare for the nation to see. Indignant cries of “it was within the limits allowed” echo around Westminster and fall on deaf ears when the public is having to cut back on all manner of things due to the recession, we have members of parliament spending £5000 on swimming pools and automatic gates to their mansions. One of the leading parties has 17 millionaires on its front bench. Hardly representative of the general populace of the UK. Ho hum.
All this said and done, I will be voting in the next election as when I was younger I used to pass the grave of Emily Davison, the Suffragette who threw herself in front of the King‘s horse to try to win the vote for women. None of the main parties are worth my time as they are simply so far removed from anything that I recognise as being worthy of steering this country. Maybe some of the politicians should take heed from Emily’s headstone - “Deeds not Words”.
Quite enough of that.
The diving season is marching on, with the rest of the Scapa Flow boats joining us this week, it has been awfully quiet this year so far. The Folk Festival is in full swing, with bands playing on the street and the hair/beards/tie-dye quotient of Stromness having increased exponentially overnight.
Fugro Seacore Deep Diver Jack-Up Barge at the Pole Star Pier
Busy Stromness
Liner "Expedition" in Scapa Flow
Diving the Dresden on Thursday and I look up to be faced with a tornado. Not the airborne military type thing, but the airborne windy type thing. I did wonder if I had been too close to the exhaust funnel, but it hung around from its parent cloud for over 10 minutes - plenty of time for me to get my camera out and take a few pics. If you do not believe it was in Orkney, you can see the oil terminal on Flotta in one of them!
Tornado over Hoy
Tornado with Flotta in the foreground
Stromness was busy on Thursday too, with two cruise liners taking up the back of the old Ola pier and the Ice Plant pier. This plus the Fugro Seacore jack-up barge at the Pole Star pier means that Stromness is really rather full and we are evicted to the Marina Pier, slick with a patina of salmon fish oil from the processing boats which moor there overnight.
Pier jumping in Stromness
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:48 am
The pictures are wonderful,DoaD,it must have been a bit scary at first when you saw the tornado.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
didn’t realise we had tornados here …! Did it do any damage …?
and those naughty people tomb-stoning … :- ) A long way to jump, but I’m sure they know exactly what’s underneath … :- )
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
SL..do not think tomb-stoning and jumping off the pier are same thing surely…..as rock free zone equals place to put pier maybe?….RJG
May 24th, 2009 at 5:05 am
I agree with DoaD on the subject of voting–I have no confidence whatsoever in politicians,but out of repsect for women who fought so hard so we have the right to vote,i will go to the polls and vote for the right(hopefully,)person. Though i don’t often get the chance to vote–i can only vote for local elections and the european elections.
May 24th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Nice picture of the Funnel Cloud, it’s not a tornado until it hits the ground and starts picking things up. In fact it is not an unusual phenomenon I have seen several this winter and the met men claim that one is more likely to see a tornado in Britain than in the US (I’ts a bit of statistical smoke and mirrors to do with geographical size and distribution. Small dogs called Toto have no need to worry in this country). Funnily enough I was talking to one of my ex-colleagues at the airport on Thursday and he interrupted me to tell me that he could see a funnel cloud, probably the same one, and he was in the process of reporting it to the Met Office. We do get occasional destructive tornadoes, I think the most recent was in Selsey on the South Coast and I can also recall one in Birmingham a few years back.
As for voting I think we should adopt a system similar to Australia, where I understand you are obliged to vote unless you have a pretty good excuse. I would , however, like to see a line on the ballot paper to indicate an intention to abstain. It would be interesting to see how the politicians would react when faced with, say, 48% none of the above.
May 24th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I’ve heard that quoted as well about us having a lot of Tornados. I’ve never seen one in the flesh and appartently missed the one that was here last year..
Love the photo’s. Are you doing any Folk Festivalling yourself this year?
I shall be voting too. It’s not just Woman that had to fight to get the vote (although they certainly had a harder and longer battle) but not so long ago it was just the landowners that were allowed to vote and that was it so I shall be voting but like others have said not for the main parties.
May 27th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
The Expedition is just the size of liner we should be encouraging here. Its hard for our cooncillors to understand that big cruise ships only line the pockets of the very few - Stagecoach, Historic Scotland and Ports&Harbours. Small businesses don’t benefit much from hordes of ‘all-in paid for’ visitors.