caldrail

Time to get on with my search for gainful employment. I think I'll phone Jobseekers Direct - its a happy friendly service to help idiots like me get a job by finding vacancies on their extensive database. After the usual identity checks the woman asked me what areas of employment I was interested in. Warehouse, distribution, logisitics. "We've got one vacancy for a warehouse supervisor.." North Swindon? Yes I've applied for that. "Well thats all we've got. Have you done any stock control?" Just a little bit. Go on, give me the details... She started to give an email address to send my CV. Then something twigged. That name! He's one of those managers who pushed me out the door at a previous job! Lets not bother with that one. "I see" She said slowly, "Ok, we'll try part time too." Eh? No, hang on... "There's a stockroom vacancy. You need to call in at Smartypants Ltd at the Designer Outlet to collect an application form. Do you know where that is?" Sigh. I can find it. Fine, thank you, thats all I need. Good grief, working for a retailer in a shopping mall... Don't they do long hours there?.... This does not bode well. Too late now. I've got to visit the sports center today so I'll drop in on Smartypants on the way home. Just in case it rains. It did. Heavy showers were predicted and sure enough the rain came pelting down. Sensibly I stayed under cover. An old woman didn't and wandered out into the car park, swivelling 180 degrees on the spot when she realised she was getting wet. It really was quite funny to watch. So was the hatchback driver going the wrong round the car park and failing to negotiate the corners at very low speed. Then a taxi driver drew up by the exit, decided he wasn't in the right position, then manoevered back and forth until he was satisfied his original position was correct after all. It must be the rain that does that to people. Anyway, I arrived at the Designer Outlet and wandered around until I found Smartypants Ltd, a retailer of clothes for the discerning young professional male. Which was pretty much what I didn't look like. But I stopped at the tills and enquired about getting an application form. "CALLING MANAGER TO FRONT DESK... MANAGER TO FRONT DESK PLEASE... He'll just be a minute Sir" Righto. I lean nonchanlantly against the desk and the manager comes around the corner ahead, a tall and very discernably smart young professional male. I hate bosses like that. They're always clicking their fingers at people and casually threatening termination of their employment if they don't run around like little servants. They never show any real leadership. Most of them never show any ability. As he approaches we both size each other up like gunfighters at the OK Corral. There's barely an introduction before he hands me a career application pack. It was a truly extraordinary document, a glossy colour brochure selling management careers, displaying teams of happy smiling management trainees whose prospects are now going to skyrocket to the point they can afford mortgages. I glanced through it with disbelief at the shear waste of quality cardboard. Noticing this, and assuming it was because I was unable to locate the actual forms neatly hidden in a pocket at the back, he very kindly pulled them out to show me. Thanks mate. You got a plastic bag for this? Its raining outside... "Oh yeah" He said, proceeding to rummage around behind the counter. Thank you kindly. Time to go. Initiative of the Week There's been a fair few stabbings in Britain of late, especially London, something we're not entirely used to and threatening to make our streets more dangerous than Los Angeles. So not suprisingly there's about to be some new measures to combat knife crime, and not a moment too soon, seeing as some people in Swindon have been using samurai swords to settle differences. Come to think of it, Swindon was also the place where one guy wandered into a police station with a Bren light machine gun some years ago. At least I had the sense to surrender mine to the police in the privacy of my own home...

Sequined shirt!!??? What are you trying to say Doc?? That Caldrails fashion sense is stuck in the 70's? Those hip and happening dudes downstairs had better watch out, Caldrail Travolta is about to crash the party!!!! Darn... My cover blown... I surrender my medallion in dishonour.... And break out the military surplus.

Some might not. There's plenty of accounts of greedy governors and one way to accumulate enough cash for a dash for political glory in Rome was to rip off the provincials when you had the opportunity. The need for cash must have been a big concern for emperors. Augustus was quite happy to send Varus to tax the germans when his reputation as a greedy man was well known. That was the whole point of his franchise system, to increase the tax base. Caligula took anything from anyone, Nero needed cash to restore Rome, Trajan ran short of readies after his costly military excursions, and thats only the examples I can think of right now.

Yes its mid-July, and the rainy season is upon us. It seems global climate change has given us a monsoon in summer. Here in Rushey Platt there's great concern about where all this rainwater is going to go. The Swindon area isn't too badly off where flooding is concerned, seeing as its built on a hill. Given last years floods and the media attention it received, people are obviously worried. Funny thing is, I had a dream last night on this subject. Nothing apocalyptic I'm afraid, so I can't write loving descriptions of it, but it was one of those curious dreams where the local area is modified. I dreamt of large basins being dug out in the countryside to serve as drainage lakes, and I vaguely remember looking at a map of them with all the names printed in blue. I was wandering around the area looking at these half completed muddy pits. As dreams go, it was pretty mundane. Yet in some ways the imagery was very vivid, and in the back of your mind such dreams always leave an impression don't they? How many of us have woken up thinking we're late for work, rushing around like a headless chicken only to realise we're five hours early? Its tempting to think I've seen something more relevant than another subconcious ramble. A vision of a future? People in less educated times used to think exactly that. People would describe their dreams to others, preach their messages even, and subsequently suffer applause, ridicule, or physical torment as a result depending on whether the 'message' was approved by society, or rather the people running it. Thankfully we live in more enlightened times, and for that reason, I know I shouldn't take those dreams too seriously. Its still a vivid mental image however, and try as I might, I still have this gut feeling that the dream was somehow more real for some reason than most. I suspect, although most people might be reticent to admit it, that many of us have similar experiences too. Swindon Redevelopment of the Week The demolished shop across the road was touted as a site for a new nightclub a few years back. That I would not like at all, but it turns out the vacant plot is to have some luxury flats built there. Phew. Now all I have to worry about is the 'nightclub' downstairs. THUMP THUMP RUMMMMBLE THUD THUMP... Excuse me for a moment. I have to go downstairs and bang on someones door again...

Thats not a good example compared to roman agriculture. The degradation of Easter island ecology was due to deforestation, but that was driven by obsessive and overly proud tribal/religious competition, not farming.

Also, since terrorism is defined as using terror to achieve their political ends, surely they would have been most effective as such within the roman world, amongst them, not as a quasi-community way off down the coast. That makes them no different to any potential organised enemy with some form of territorial border.

I would have thought that Christianity is probably one of the biggest legacies Rome has left us (and the Greeks), invented as it was by a Roman citizen from Tarsus, adopted and shaped to its definitive form by the Roman state. I would think you were right, since the christian church preserves roman rituals and customs, not to mention some very roman attitudes. However - concerning the 'rights of man' - such things only exist when a culture decides they're worth achieving. A dictatorial government doesn't want Man to have Rights at all - it gets in the way of their decision making. The british culture is an amalgam of celtic and germanic origin, with some roman influence lurking in the background, mostly in legal, religious, and educational areas. You can't really claim a political link because that was broken within fifty years of the roman withdrawal, when british government had collapsed and was taken over by innumerable petty kingdoms run by tribal warlords, although I do accept there were people trying to restore roman rule in spite of the prevailing anarchy.

What should a man believe in? A soldier would say you should believe in yourself. A politician would say believe in his vision. A christian would say believe in Jesus. It seems then that there is a choice of what you can believe, and inevitably, there's always persuasion or pressure to conform to someone elses ideals. In some situations, conformity is understandable. A soldier does what he's ordered to do because life gets very uncomfortable if he doesn't. You generally do what politicians want because otherwise they jail you. Most of us have no intention of being burnt at the stake. The problem here is that conformity isn't just expected, its enforced, with potentially dire consequemces for those who cannot submit. This is the extreme end of this facet of human social behaviour. There is also the that endless recruiting that goes on, the knock on the door from one christian sect or another, the pamphlets or cult newsletters through the letterbox. The symbolism is often well illustrated, but if you think about it, surely the promulgation of stereotypical images require a latent acceptance of christian belief to start with? Since I have no belief in Jesus as the son of some invisible omnipresent super-being, it was hardly likely to work. Sometimes, there's someting more insidious, as religious people manipulate things to bring you around to their way of thinking. Researching roman slavery, I delved into the works of a roman writer, Cassius Dio. Constantly he refers to slavery as a lack of free will, describing Marc Antony as a slave of his egyptian mistress as much as a conquered people led away in chains. Its a view I can readily understand given the attempts to fit me into a particular stereotype that have gone on for years. I dislike this pressure to change. One of the things I hate most about christianity is the attitude that the end justifies the means, that any sin may be committed and forgiven if the perpetrator (or his judge) believes or proclaims he acted in his religions name..Fate is the sum of all decisions and natural forces, and since God is merely a human concept and has no reality beyond an excuse for human decision, there cannot therefore be an act of God, which renders prayer pointless apart from proving your conformity to your peers. Or perhaps giving you a psychological rock to cling to when life gets stormy? After all, christianity - like many other religions - relies on psychological dependence to an unseen omnipotent being whose existence is a matter of faith. For the record, I'm a spiritualist. Not a standard spiritualist at all, but someone with a more individualistic belief structure which I have to say is pretty typical of me. It reflects my nature as a human being. In my worldview, the world is how the world is. I cannot see the world in any other way, for that is the evidence of my experience. Its that experience that leads me to be a spiritualist. My mother, as a devout practising christian, prays for just about everything, mostly that I'll come to my senses and discover God. She has this strange idea that I'm a stray sheep, who will someday realise that I need to rejoin the flock. To me thats ridiculous. I was never really a christian to begin with, and since I've adopted my beliefs as my own personal worldview I see no reason to adopt the pomp and ceremony of a religion I regard as hopelessly hypocritical and anachronistic.You see, belief is what you hold to be true. Religion is organised belief, and in most cases, its what someone tells you to believe. Since I do not formalise my beliefs, add pointless ritual, nor listen to preachers, it must be said that I do not subscribe to religion. Since I do not therefore expect a divine agency to put my world to rights, the obstacles placed before my progress are the work of people, not some supernatural curse. Those individuals seeking to manipulate my beliefs and entice me to become christian are barking up the wrong tree. So, whoever is trying it on, at least have the moral courage to stand before me and make your case. There was once an arab, who, having experienced the medieval crusaders handiwork, wrote that - Jews, christians, and moslems are all the same. In truth there are only two sorts of men - those with brains and no religion - and those with religion and no brains...

i think whats not appreciated is that whilst the pirates get away with it, they tend to become arrogant and daring. That doesn't mean they're particularly heroic at all, its just that criminals only operate because they believe they will get away with it. As for Ostia, that was a raid, and it makes sense to see it that way. They went, grabbed what they wanted for profit, burned something else to distract the romans, and sank ships to assure they weren't pursued. Job done lads! I can't see any political gain from this. Further, since terrorism is not concerned with the profit motive (although many such groups have no choice but to) but to frighten the enemy public rather than its leaders or armed forces in order to achieve their ends, the comparison has to be made on that principle. Now I dare say the romans afflicted by the raid were none too happy, and worrried such things might happen again - thats only natural - but were the pirates attacking Ostia for that purpose? I would say not. The cilician pirates wanted a coup, a victory, something to brag about. Such operations by criminal groups are only sustainable if the group has achieved a certain level of experience and organisation, and judging from what happened when Pompey turned up you get the impression they weren't at that stage. Without such sustained campaigns, the act or terror does not impact on the roman public as a whole. As a violent raid it struck at the heart of roman commerce, so the romans were naturally incensed at the sheer gall of it. Off you go Pompey, sort them out.

There was a guy on TV who claimed that silted-up harbours were responsible for the roman collapse in the west. I thought he was talking out of his rear at the time, given that he did not satisfactorily explain why silting was such a problem. After all, surely the romans would simply find another anchorage nearby? That said, I remember also a Time Team program that uncovered a roman boat moored against a bank to stop it eroding away (the river had since changed course). Now if roman farming was the cause, then perhaps the silting problem was worse than I imagined, but that said did no-one notice? Surely the romans would do something? They were quite capable of building ports - we know that from the work carried out at Ostia.

The 20th century was a conflict of ideology, mostly concerned with domniation by facism/communism/democracy in a general sense, since its noticeable that like-minded nations allied themselves very easily. In any conquest, it has little to with the populations desires - it revolves around personal ambition, and since politics involves selling these ambitions to the population, they are nonetheless persuaded its a good idea. I would say its a by-product of human pshychology, since all cultures that wish to be viewed as 'great' require enlargement of their territory, and since conquest as such is not acceptable, then union is the alternative. This especially true of a manufactured empire that the EU aspires to, a 'peaceful' alternative to the regimes like the nazi's for instance, and bearing in mind the socialist agenda underneath it the EU is therefore a conformist society.

Maybe so, but the suggestion that the EU may be a manifestation of this I take some issue with, Calders. The Treaty of Lisbon, the next step toward creation of the european superstate, requires all signatory nations to agree. France and Holland said no. Ireland had a referendum and said no. That means the treaty cannot proceed legally. Yet the Irish prime minister was given four months to turn his countries decision around, and our own government is to ratify the treaty without a promised referendum. Thats all about empire building in my book, about a higher level of government being imposed on us. You'll get no arguement there! However, when you have a standard system of measurement, a standard currency, a standard army, a standard governmental system - what else it than an empire of european countries ruled from Brussels? The people behind this move toward unification are moving as quickly as they dare without the individual nations pulling out, and they simply aren't going to accept a refusal. You wait. In the not too distant future all our counties will be swept away for new 'european' districts, and sooner or later the same will be applied to national borders. Its only a matter of time. One of the great problems with extended peace is that it doesn't allow an avenue of conquest. Such behaviour is part of the human psyche, and since dominant humans like to dominate others too, its in the nature of the beast to work toward aggrandisement. There are people in the EU bureaucracy who very much want such pretentions, and in the future you will find there's a great deal more imposition to come. Or were the Metric Martyrs wasting their time? Nothing to do with Rome at all. The roman idea of empire, and the power and glory that went with it, is not inspired by roman ideals but a part of human psychology that emerges periodically in individuals who want the same power and glory themselves and drag everyone into it whether they want it or not. Sooner or later we will have to adopt an ID card. What for? To oversee where people are and what they do, along with a large and invasive database of peoples private lives. Its in the planning stage in Britain now. The socialists of Europe want an empire to prove the credibility of their system as much as the personal profit derived from it. There are french and germans who want a european empire their country has always been denied. Rome might exist in the conciousness as an example of what they want to achieve (at least what they regard as the positive parts of it) but the motivation is personal, as empires are created by individuals exercising political power, not by the will of the people, who would probably prefer things left as they were. Like me.

Libraries are places that require a quiet atmosphere. Its very easy to be distracted and since the whole point of a library is to provide educational material, with too many distractions its difficult to educate yourself. The day-care centre facilities are a case in point. Young children like to run about, throw tantrums, and generally cry for attention, not to mention inspire adults to hold impromptu singing lessons. I spent one hour on the library computer with somebodies child threatening to use my keyboard, with a sort of mischevious 'I wonder if i can get away with it' look on his face. Luckily, the embarrased father made valiant efforts to keep the kid under control. AM is largely quiet these days - his epic converations with his poverty-stricken mate in the plastic mac and sandals are no longer educating us on the state of british pensions or how dangerous the zulu's are. But then nature likes to take advantage of ecological niches, and in true darwinian fashion a group of youths has decided the library is a cool place to socialise and so engage each other in loud conversations. I'm tempted to write their biographies. I now know more about their private lives than my own. I asked one lad to be quiet last week. He told me to go and use and another computer. Time to roll up my sleeves.... Yes, its big trouble in little Library.... Rain Shower of the Week Nature slipped up. I popped out to the shops and was back before the downpour began. Its been sunshine and showers for a while now, blue skies with huge lumps of towering cumulus glistening white in the sunshine, and absolutely filthy black underneath. Very dramatic cloudscapes, very pretty to look at, and very damp if you get caught underneath.

Marius was of course unable to recruit senior romans to his hastily raised legion for service in africa, thus the usual division between hastatii, pricipes, and triarii wasn't possible. He therefore equipped and trained them as heavy infantry in a similar fashion to that he made standard afterward, finding that it was easier and and more efficient both from training and combat point of view to standardise the ranks. The cohort structure was after all a joint element of centuries - it had no 'spirit' as the legion or century had, no standard. There weren't any cohortal commanders either (if Adrian Goldsworthy is wrong, and the evidence is apparently against him) since a unit of this size is too large for one man to control effectively on the field, although that might be different for administration purposes. The maniple was retained for administration as an example of roman organisation but had no further part to play in roman warfare after the marian reforms. Its an important point that doesn't get enough stress - that roman organisation in administration was as detailed as todays, but that their organisation on the battlefield was simplified for practical purposes. The romans wanted direct control, on the principle of 'too many chefs', and also because a battle plan could go disastrously wrong if during the fighting a junior commander started making his own. If nothing else, the romans liked to be cautious in warfare - they didn't like disasters. Its the co-operative nature of fighting on the battlefield that requires some consideration since without a pyramid command structure it all looks a bit daft to our eyes, yet the romans understood that soldiers needed strong leaders at the front - the entire rationale behind the centurion - and that this centurion could only command a unit of around a hundred men effectively. Expedience is always something you see in roman history, warfare was little different, and discovering that a co-operative cohort - an element of troops (composed of centuries) - was a convenient size for confronting enemies, Marius made the cohort standard instead of the maniple.

In other words they provided the political, legal and physical infrastructure by which the Mediterranean and its hinterlands were furnished with a common meta-culture, bringing both subjectively good and bad elements, and laying the groundwork for the very idea of a universal empire that would inspire future generations? Thats the problem. It doesn't inspire future generations, it inspires future dictators who rather like the idea of ruling a large empire. The opinions of the common people have little to do with it. Recent events in europe have proven that.

A layer of green glass can only mean one thing - intense heat. Thats been used by Von Danikens acolytes as evidence of nuclear weapons in prehistoric times, since such a phenomenon was found at Los Alamos when US nukes were tested. However, any source of intense heat will produce something similar in sandy terrain. Forest fires? Not really hot enough I would have said - please prove me wrong - so we are looking at an extraterrestrial cause, something like that you might expect from a large impact.

A weak senate? Yet Augustus was very careful to keep them sweet. The senate was composed of wealthy and influential men, a sort of club for the privileged, and there were always going to be men among them waiting in the wings to attain power. Indeed, the republican system was designed to allow people the opportunity to do so and impede one man from dominating politics. Notice how people joked about the year of Julius and Caesar as consuls, when the lacklustre partner (ironic, but I've forgotten his name. Bibulus?) was pushed aside to all intent and purposes. It isn't so much the senate were weak, it had more to do with the rise of legionary commanders with political aspirations as influential men in their own right, with personal loyalty from their troops rather than to Rome, but also because the senate were more cocerned with their own privilege than serving public duty, thus had effectively lost the support of common people by that stage. Julius Caesar for instance took advantage of that, and against nromal roman custom went among the plebs canvassing for support rather like modern politicians do. Senators were more used to the plebs canvassing them for support. Also, you need to realise the culture of Rome was undergoing a change. In reaction to one war after another, the people were seeking alternatives and whatever luxuries they could obtain. In this manner, the descent of roman morality after the Punic Wars mirrors that of Britain after WW2. Senators of course exploited this sea change and the whole 'bread and circuses' thing became the way to please the public, to fob them off with enough food and entertainment to stop them becoming politically agitated. They were more interested in their own career prospects and class privilege than a few rogue generals.

I see on the news that a 'Minister for Pompeii' has been recruited, although there are fears that the sight is now going to exploited commercially, and is already being hired as a venue for events.

Not quite. The cohort was increasingly appearing here and there before the Marian Reforms. The maniple wasn't meeting the needs of the roman legions and it was found (by experiment? Accident?) that in battle the cohort was a more useful size, the main reason why Marius adopted that formation as standard.

Whilst I remain neutral on this issue, I'm going to play the prosecution lawyer here. Nero wasn't a sensible person. he attempted to have Rome renamed Neropolis after its reconstruction, and his comment after the Domus Aurea was complete was "Now I can live as a human being". The fact he was away when the fire started does not exonerate him at all, it may be a wish to distance himself from his work, and the efforts made to assist the public during and after the fire might simply have been a publicity stunt, since Nero was never one to baulk at breaking laws to get what he wanted. Nero identified himself with the god Apollo, regarding himself as beyond mere mortals in a very immature way. In any case, since the influence of the senatorial elite was an obstacle to getting his way doesn't it make sense to burn their homes and therefore do away with their places of business? Your witness....

There's been a lot of UFO stories lately. The british army has been reporting all over the place. A story in this mornings paper is about one guy who dialled the emergency number, describing a strange light. The police patiently asked where the light was and came came to the conclusion it was the moon. Funny thing is, we all see strange strange objects in the sky sometimes. Thousands of anti-aircraft rounds were fired at Venus in World War 2 for instance. The girlfriend of our band manager once told me of an object taking off and rocketing into the sky one night, and she's a very rational person indeed. Have I seen a UFO? Need you ask?... I was sat beside my bedroom window one winter morning. The sky was clear, the air quality good. My attention was drawn to a flashing light in the sky. It was travelling at some height over the house in a direction against the normal flow of airway traffic that you usually see over Swindon. The flashing light was quite strong, brighter than you'd expect, and it dawned on me that an airliner couldn't possibly have a beacon that powerful in daylight. As the object went over the house, you could clearly see a polyhedral shape turning over end to end. Thats why it flashes! The objects flat sides were reflecting sunlight as it revolved. I wondered if ripples in the windows glass was distorting the shape, but it certainly didn't look like it. What did I see? I haven't an idea at all. It certainly didn't look like an aeroplane. In all honesty I doubt it was a spaceship full of space aliens being taken to see our leader, but what else could possibly match that description? An unidentified flying object. The Vulcan Is Back! The Avro Vulcan is a relic from the Cold War, one of britains fleet of V-Bombers, designed to carry nuclear weapons into the heart of Russia on one way bombing strikes. Eventually it did see action during the Falkland War, depositing explosive devices on the runway of Port Stanley Airport at astonishing distances from their bases. Most vulcans have been scrapped, but there's one or two in museums here and there. I remember seeing a vulcan at a Great Warbirds display at Wroughton airfield many years ago. I was struck by the sight of a large jet bomber showing extraordinary agility at low level, and most of all, the sheer noise and drama as it pulled skyward suddenly and vanished into the clouds with a crescendo of car alarms going off everywhere. The ground literally shook. That was some finale. I hear one of the remaining vulcans has finally been cleared for public flying display at a cost of around

At tunguska, it was reported that trees were left standing and stripped of branches at the epicenter, consistent with an airblast, not an impact. A solid object colliding with the earth will leave a crater, an object exploding in the atmosphere will not, although as demonstrated it will project a devastating shockwave. As for conservatism in scientific circles, thats only for those scientists with vested interests in keeping quiet. Many scientists these days offer incredible theories, some clever, some half-baked, but not so conservative as once considered polite and proper.

Do 100mph in england and you're front page news these days, dragged through a crowd of photographers with a towel over your head. The welsh police chief doesn't bother with that sort of malarkey, he prefers to jump out of bushes with speed cameras for a hobby, and then tars and feathers you for not being a welsh driver.

The opening sequences of that film are quite honestly some of the best depictions of WWII combat you are ever likely to see - it inspired the Band of Brothers series in the same vein. Woah... Whilst I'm definitley a patriotic brit, the work done by the USAAF should not be overlooked. The Mustang was a great escort fighter, but like every other operational fighter crossing the channel in those days, they were committing themselves to ground attacks too. It was common practice to engage targets at random on the flight home, bearing in mind that after combat the mustangs were away from the bomber stream and very likely at a much lower level. This also applies to P47 and P38 aircraft, not to mention the attacks made by bomb toting spitfires, some of which were flown by american squadrons in the Italian campaign. Check out the various plastic models - many have optional rocket racks to glue under the wings. It is pretty inevitable. PS - I should also add the Mustang was designed in 120 days to british air ministry specification, and disappointed the RAF with its mediocre performance from its Allison engine at altitude. The original version was relegated to ground attack duties, and it wasn't until the mustang was adapted to fit the packard merlin engine that the aeroplane came into its own.

A little tip ladies and gentlemen - always check Wikipedia before engaging brain.... It turns out that unbeknown to me the tunguska event is not unusual. Such an event is believed to occur once every three hundred years on average somewhere around the world, and US defence analysis suggests that airburts in the upper atmosphere from small objects are regular occurences. As for distibution of the craters of more physical impacts, remember that the continents have moved around a lot over the ages. The earths landmass has migrated northwards since the oceans formed. I'm reminded of a meteorite impact in the arabian desert witnessed by explorers there searching for lost ruins. A hundred years later, the crater had almost vanished beneath the sand. Exposed craters will weather away.