caldrail

The assassins were well aware of Caesar's popularity. Nonetheless, he had become Dictator, permanently. That was a republican post where a nominee was given full emergency powers until the emergency was over or six months had elapsed. To be given it for life was unprecedented - and it meant that Caesar was by any other name Rex, the title we usually translate as 'king' but the Romans saw it as something much more tyrannical that our usual quasi-medieval image. With Caesar as Dictator, no-one else stood a chance of becoming top dog, and with that sort of power it was too dangerous. Rome had become a republic to get rid of that sort of situation (The expulsion and later defeat of Tarquinus the Proud) and Rex was almost a dirty word. Caesar had made a theatrical show of refusing the crown offered by Marc Antony during a Lupercalia - it didn't fool anyone. Caesar had to go, even if he was polite and respectful of the Senate. The Romans were not really aware that the empire had grown too large for governance since at that stage it did not affect them. Provinces were not ruled from Rome. They were ruled locally by local hierarchies with a governor acting as guarantor of legal and loyalty issues. Please note that a governor did not interfere in normal day to day affairs and was the last word in both Roman and local law. The ability of future Caesars during the imperial era to rule Rome declined because they were continually bleeding off power from the Senate to rule autocratically as much as possible. Whereas under the original system the empire might well have functioned reliably, the Caesar's ambitions basically made it increasingly difficult for them to maintain rule, especially since the bonds of provincial loyalty were no longer to the state, but to individuals, with the usual human vagaries involved.

Some of my work colleagues are not too impressed with me right now. Pfah. As if I care. The reason is that one of the youngsters is having his birthday celebration today and I have no intention of turning up. Truth is he's always kept me at arms length as it were, and never really conversed with me. No problem, but his big party is therefore of no importance to me whatsoever. Another colleague attempted to persuade me to turn up during the queue for the end of day attendance scan - I told him I was indifferent and why, right in front of the whole shift. I certainly don't mind carousing but as an afterthought? No, I don't need popularity like youngsters do, and I don't need to get drunk just to have a good time. Get A New One Once in a while the top boss in a huge multi-national corporation will pop in and look around. As you might expect, when there's a threat of someone important wandering around the workplace, managers suddenly get very insistent on tidiness and activity. If you work for a Japanese company as I do, the issue is worse, because they have all sorts of expectations. Even if you work in a warehouse full of dust producing cardboard packaging and oil soaked parts, workers must be clean and spotless. I discovered this on my way back from break as a pair of managers assessed everyone passing by for adherence to uniform code. I failed because my hi-vis was a little dust and oil marked by lots of activity (I'm not the cleanest worker in the world as I prefer to get things done). Okay, I admit it, it was no longer a bright yellow but instead had become a sort of faded cammo pattern of dull green and grey. The subordinate team leader demanded my attention and quietly told me to get a new hi-vis. That's an order. Yes sir. The New One Doesn't Work That new tyrannosaurus of a cardboard baler is proving a problem child. We're all shaking our heads and muttering "I told them so" as the machine fails to work reliably straight from the installation. It is a big issue of course. The amount of cardboard we go through is vast - one of the mechanics working on the new machine could not believe how much cardboard our company has to deal with, a feature of having to deal with bulk supplies of auto parts that must be delivered in pristine condition, and whilst he spoke, the yard outside was filling up with temporary bins full of the stuff. They even called overtime specifically to help clear it. Now parts of the machine have failed and must go back to Germany to be redesigned and manufactured. You know, for months I was essentially the only associate working on cardboard waste within the warehouse, dealing with smaller boxes whilst the bigger external machines took care of larger packages. Now they have a regular crowd of workers trying to cope with the load and regularly get swamped. One of my colleagues said that things were easier when I was baling. Feels nice to be wanted doesn't it? Sigh. Oh well, the next order has been passed to me and packages full of auto parts must be decanted into stillages for the production line. So that's another load of oil soaked impact bars then. I can see why my colleagues want to get drunk. Screenie of the Week It's a long bank holiday this easter so a spot of virtual flying is called for. I just love those big propliners and cargo planes, this one - a Douglas C124 from the Cold War era is no exception, seen here flying important cargo and probably a few sailors on a free ticket from a naval base in the Puget Sound to Alameda in sunny California. Enjoy the pic... Drunk in charge of that wonderful machine? That's just criminal. I had a lovely evening - instead of loud crowd noise, thudding metronome beats in the background, and all the hot sweaty jostling for another drink, all I heard was the mighty rumble of four large capacity radial aero-engines. Heaven. Oh all right, I admit it, I also indulged myself with a spot of heavy metal guitar. Hell too Well, the holiday isn't over, and I have more time to wander around the supermarket to find something different and interesting.... Aha... That bottle of White Rum looks good....

A lot of what is said about Roman logistics is a little exaggerated. The truth is they were not as well organised on a daily basis as is usually claimed. To undergo a march, especially if not planned for, legions would mount a requisition of the local area, basically acquiring anything they thought desirable from the local populace who could do very little about it and risked violence if they did. Legions were capable of great logistical feats but this depended on who was in charge and where the army was - a stationary site was far easier to supply than a marching column and for that matter, troops went with a certain amount of field rations or resources (up to around seventeen days worth at most depending on what they had in store). The situation grew worse in the late empire because there was less enthusiasm and ability to organise. let alone conduct a campaign. Unlike columns of later eras, Roman armies did not have central supply bases sending trains of wagons to supply them (they did try this for a while in the late empire unsuccessfully). Therefore a lot of Roman logistics was about local foraging - this is supported by the sources - and pre-arranged supply drops by ship if possible, though clearly there was room for disaster in this approach and this was something the Romans were well aware of. In fact, if you notice, the legions were supposed to be as self-sufficient as possible, though by the late empire this ability had eroded. Later Roman armies were far better at what Goldsworthy calls 'low level warfare' than large scale campaigning. In that style of warfare, small raiding forces move quickly and cannot rely on logistics at all, being dependent entirely on what they carry or can acquire. PS - I did forget to underline that in most cases the Roman legions marched with a wagon train in the column. Although the speed of their marches is sometimes praised, the forced marches would have to dispense with this most basic of supply situation because with a wagon train, the march is at the average speed of the animals which is quite slow. Also with a train in tow a complement of camp followers and adventurous merchants would be tagging along.

Well into the middle ages in secret, reactivated as fashionable alternatives from the Rennaisance onward, but with Christianity dominant and in post Roman times very intolerant of paganism, it was never going to gain any popular acceptance. For instance,... http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1986-7/horton.htm

Money is a funny thing. Some people are almost supernaturally capable of accruing it, others simply take what others earn without permission, and most of us get by with what we can get. How we spend our cash is another matter. Younger people tend to be hedonistic - there's a young lad at work who has spent his entire monthly pay cheque in two days each and every time. To be fair, he doesn't moan about the hassles of having no money like some do, but all the same time, he desperately needs some financial advice and discipline. On the other end of the scale is one guy I often talk to who wanted to propose to his girlfriend. So he went out and bought an engagement ring. Nine pounds? Don't be silly. Ninety points? Not good enough. Nine hundred pounds? Doesn't make that big statement. No, he squandered his savings, nine thousand pounds, on the ring. Happily she said yes. Given how depressed he gets by the end of a working shift maybe that's just as well. I must confess I do sometimes spend on impulse. The other day I wandered past the local pawnbroker and thought that since I had some time on my hands, why not have a browse? It's sometimes interesting what people will sell. I went over to the line of guitars hanging on the wall. One stood out immediately, a gothic metal style electric guitar with a huge price tag. I looked closer. Floyd Rose tremolo, Seymour Duncan pickups, 24 frets with gothic inlays, full locking, and a feel of quality. Oh yes. It will be mine. Right now, hey, Mr Manager, I want this..... So I have ownership of an upmarket electric guitar retailing at nearly a thousand pounds, though I got it considerably cheaper as secondhand.. At first it was horrendous to play because the action (the height of strings above the fretboard) was ridiculous. Too high and the fingers have to make clumsy, slow, and overlong movements. Too low and you get fret buzz and a nasty truncated sound. But adjust it correctly and.... Please excuse me while an adult male goes glassy eyed and rather excited by a smooth and heavyweight distorted guitar sound. Money can be so useful sometimes. Oh No, Not Scotland Again... That detestable Sturgeon woman just won't shut up. She and other Scottish Nationalists are spouting their demands for another referendum on independence. This time we had Alex Salmond, the politician who failed last time to persuade the Scots to leave the United Kingdom, claiming that the British government cannot ignore democracy. Excuse me? I seem to remember the Scots have had a referendum on independence and chose to remain within the United Kingdom. Sorry Mr Salmond, but you cannot ignore democracy. Worse still the Nationalists seem to believe that if you don't like the result of a referendum then vote again until you do. What's democratic about that? But where is Scotland going to get the money from? North Sea oil and gas revenues having vanished, the only option is to stay in the EU. Which they cannot do as part of the UK since Brexit is now enabled by parliamentary law and signed off by the Queen. As an independent country? What they don't seem to realise is that as a new country, even if they get independence before Brexit is finalised, they still have to apply for EU membership, require full consent of current members, and won't have the financial perks hard won by British politicians over the years. A colleague at work suggested the English should have a referendum to decide whether we want the Scots with us or not. I'm starting to agree with him. Get rid of those moaning minnies up north and forget them. Close the border and deport all those terrible Scottish people in our midst. I'm not the only one who has noticed that the Scots up north are the nicest people in the world whilst those living in England are just the rear end of human society, a comedian said exactly that on television. I don't really want to wish the Scottish any hardship but I confess I would take great pleasure in watching Scotland stumble.

Deep seated approval of military service? You might be shocked how little there was. For most, legion service was a guaranteed career for a couple of decades in imperial times assuming nothing untoward happened (the vast majority never saw anything more violent than a tavern punch-up ). However, the regard of most people was that the legions were a necessary evil or a business opportunity. Living near soldiers was a dubious benefit for some considering they often appropriated whatever they felt like and there was no real legal address other than complaints to the legion command, which got you nowhere, or worse, beaten up once or twice - and very severely - by outraged soldiers whose perks you interfered with. This is attested to in the sources. Note also that legion service was already beginning to become undesirable in the reign of Augustus. We have an account of a man punished for cutting off the thumbs of his sons so they would never serve, and Tiberius was asked to look into how many men were avoiding military service by hiding in rural slave barracks. The situation only got worse. By the end of his reign we have mutinies in Germania and Pannonia over conditions of service and the apparent withdrawal of normal retirement rights, caused by legion commanders who found it more cost effective to keep long serving veterans on the payroll by hook or by crook than waste time looking for raw recruits to replace them. And of course it got worse still over the course of the imperial period. People cutting their thumbs became a scandal, a real issue, such that Constantine ruled men without thumbs were still capable of civic roles. Valentinian ordered them burned alive, and Theodosius recruited them anyway on the basis that two men without thumbs were as good as one fully able man. By then recruitment was a corrupt affair with recruiters pocketing budgets and hiring cheaper migrants. Religion was making recruitment all the more difficult.

It works a heck of a lot better than the old software. Thumbs up (or down, if you accept this new fangled interpretation of traditional symbolic getsures )

The demand of the Roman world for people to speak latin only really impacts upon administration and politics, where we see the local Italian languages become recessive and maternal in persistence whereas latin dominates the paternal line because of the need to earn a living in a more expansive state, instead of the tribal regions cooperating but not actually run from Rome. I don't dispute that latin spread through trading, but learning the native language, or adopting a hybrid slang, would ordinarily be more conducive to getting a good deal.

These should answer many questions... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholae_Palatinae www.fectio.org.uk/articles/scholae.htm The Praetorians may have been disbanded by Constantine but the position of Praetorian Prefect remained as a political office.

Doris has been across England. It just isn't English to have storms and gale force gusts blasted the country, and someone really ought to do something about this freak weather. I mean, really.... But it happened. So I trudged four miles to work in a sort of unsteady zig-zag pattern depending on which way the wind was blowing. Luckily the rain held off. It was damp, a sort of fine spray, but no deluge made my life even more miserable than having to brave the elements each working day and endure the long hours of labour. Feed Me Our new big waster crusher is installed. It cost a vast sum of money - modesty and company privacy prevents me from mentioning the enormous wad of cash the installation has demanded. Over the last few months I've been getting familiar with each small baler and it's foibles. Reliable Olive, bad tempered Barney, lazy old Bob, neglected Nessie, and all the others. The engineer in charge of the new baler inadvertently called it 'Doris', and that is the name by which it shall be called. Doris it is. Now Doris is not a small machine. It's a veritable T Rex of a baler, permanently open mouthed and a 'feed me' expression it's sheet steel face. But times move on, I'm being put back on general duties, and Doris will have new keepers to tend to it's voracious appetite. Good. Boys Will Be Boys The high winds caused other problems for us, not least blowing rubbish down storage racking aisles that imposed obstacles for our long suffering forklift trucks. The answer that the managers conjured was to move an industrial 40ft skip inside the warehouse instead of leaving it out in the yard, so filling it could be done with doors closed. That would be fine, but one young colleague of mine, a former retail manager with a penchant for treating the workplace like an adventure playground, found organising the push as a great chance to climb, point, shout, and generally play at being important. The thing is I watched horrified as he rode the huge skip on top of a ladder whilst the forklift lifted, bumped, and edged the container forwards. That was visibly risky, and as soon as he was separate from everyone else, I headed over to remind him of Health & Safety in the Workplace. You see, in Britain this much hated concern has a very real relevance. If I see someone doing something dangerous and don't report or take action upon it, then any accident is just as much my own fault. That's enshrined in law. LP was not interested in my advice. "Yeah well you keep your opinions to yourself. You're not a manager." He told me firmly over his shoulder. Perhaps, but in view of his disrespect and blatent disregard for his own well-being, I had a word with a team leader who had a word with him. Of course that has now soured the relationship. We used to converse and joke together but frankly someone who once worked as a manger and keeps going on about becoming one again really ought to know better. He doesn't. His understanding of industrial practises are woeful, his attitude increasingly self important as managers come to rely on his organisational flair. Nonetheless, just as he reminded me, he isn't a manger either. And lately he's been given some very hard lessons on activity within the workplace, responsibility, and the prerogatives of status. Silly boy. But life is a learning process and hopefully for him, a safer one. Holiday Procedure of the Week This most coveted award must go to the agency I work for. I discovered a few days ago that if I don't book all my outstanding holiday by March 31st, I lose them, and the pay that goes with it. Oh great. Three Bank Holidays and a Spring Shutdown with no holiday allowance left afterward? Worst still, they gave me conflicting instructions on how to book a holiday. So as in most cases of these kinds, my internal emotional thermometer went straight to boiling point and angry phone calls were followed by visits of the agency rep to put me straight. A peace treaty concluded, I was told that my outstanding entitlement - which has to be calculated at Head Office - will be passed on to me by the end of the week. No, the end of the next week. No, the Wednesday after that. What a farce. Holiday request pending.

The Roman world is often seen in modern popular opinion as an evil empire - but this is a reflection of more recent experience such as the vast scale of the ideological conflicts of the last century which more or less started in 1914 and haven't completely yet tailed off. The Roman Empire is a title one needs to be cautious of - they were not a unified society in terms of culture (many don't realise this - common perception is everyone got 'romanised' after being conquered, but that just isn't true, and the image of latin culture we get introduced to at school is incredibly misleading). Nor was their empire a coherent centrally controlled nation state - it was a patchwork of loyal territories with varying status. Mainland Italy for instance never achieved provincial status until the reign of Diocletian. Evil? Well, the Romans certainly got up to things we see as morally or ethically wrong. Politically they toy with tyranny to suit themselves. Their political system was not gentlemanly and often involved murder. Their justice system was very harsh and often partisan, their military functionally independent of state control and for that matter often barely under control, their entertainment heavily skewed in favour of violence and risk of death. Their Caesars were often power hungry, domineering, dangerous men. One or two genuinely flakey. That's accepted. In actual fact the Roman Empire was relatively benign, nothing like as cruel and overbearing to its own citizens as say the Sassanid Persian Empire. There was a genuine chance of social mobility, opportunities to prosper, ways of making your mark upon the world. The simple fact is, regardless of circumstance, the desire of former territories to look back upon the Roman Empire as a sort of 'golden age' is very expressive of the lingering attachment the bonds of latin dominance have left us - we still bear those marks today and it colours modern politics.

Good grief. It's nearly half way through February and my poor deprived readers have had no news and whinges from me since the festive season. Fear not, brave public, you are not forgotten. At no cost to the country's economy and tattered finances, without the need for UN convoys and airlifts, without the need for drone and bombing attacks to clear obstructions, I bring the latest, and I mean late, news from the Rushey Platt Villa. [bSnowfall [/b] There I was, knee deep in cardboard boxes, stuffing them into a crushing machine while fending off colleagues who saw my job as an easier option than theirs, when I spotted it. Snow? Was that snow falling outside? Of course I couldn't miss the opportunity to head over to the door of the warehouse and have a looksee. It was. Nothing special or disastrous, just a few flurries of wintery weather to please the British heart after our lacklustre Christmas. "What is that stuff coming out of the sky?" Asked a forklifter. He really didn't know. That was the first time he had ever witnessed snow in his life, and in his far off homeland in sub-tropical Goa, snow just does not happen. Another Goan was nervous, not really understanding what snow was, and worried about possible side effects. One the other hand, one Polish girl prayed the snow would get heavier so she could build a snowman like she did back home. Well, despite the repeated warnings on weather reports, the snow flurries across England were fairly feeble and here in rainy old Swindon we got almost nothing. Fighting Hunger There are times we think our employer gives us almost nothing. Oh sure we get paid, but there's an insidious lack of morale as the targets we have to meet only get higher with fewer resources to achieve them. Maybe I'm whinging a little. After all, the company did pay for a Christmas dinner and a week or two ago we got a free fish and chips. Yummy. I notice the bottles of tomato ketchup and mayonnaise left on the tables afterward quickly started evaporating. President Of The Week Who else but Donald Trump? Clearly expecting to rule by decree and change the face of the Earth with clicks of his fingers and swipes of his expensive pens, he has run straight into a lesson on co-operation mounted by the judiciary branch of American government, one we never normally hear anything about in Britain. The funny things was that I debated with a colleague at work about whether Trump would get a lesson, but I confess I thought it was going to be from the security services, not the judges. So his executive order to ban travel from suspicious states achieves almost nothing. Thus he threatens to make another. How the Russians must be laughing. All that effort to rig the electoral system, all those spies wandering around taking photographs and exchanging envelopes of secret information, all those bugs and whistleblowers and Wikileaks.... All the Russians have to do is follow Trump on Twitter.

No, The Senate could not issue decrees until the reign of Tiberius. For emergencies they called upon action from the Consuls, or if necessary, assigned a Dictator for six months or until the emergency was over - but this was giving Rome a temporary tyrant and was never done lightly, or indeed often. Understand this essential point of Roman republican politics - they were not avoiding tyranny, they managed it to avoid the consequences of excess.

Day One by Andreas Carrini examines archeological evidence of Rome's earliest time. Mary Beard's SPQR contains useful insights and critique of the monarchial period. In fact I have by coincidence arrived at similar conclusions to Mary Beard's ideas surrounding the meaning of the latin word Rex which we translate as 'King'. She doesn't see that word as meaning 'monarch' in either medieval or modern sense, and prefers to think of it as 'Chieftan'. As for myself I noted the use of the word rex in letters from Vindolanda, and since a commanding officer is clearly not a king, there had to be a different, more primal meaning, one associated with overlordship and control. The thing about Rome's earliest history is that the versions we have inherited from Roman writers is to a large extent fiction, which Mary Beard notes bears extraordinary resemblance to greek models. They knew no more about their past than we do, and so basically filled in the gaps with stuff that sounded good.

The greeks were focused on colonies rather than actual territory. Places like Cumae, Tarentum, and Naples were greek settlements I believe.

I have a strange feeling it might be nearly Christmas again. My suspicions were raised when my local supermarket began playing the very same Christmas hits - you know the ones, I won't traumatise you with their memory. The next clue was the presence of a brass band playing .. well... Christmassy tunes. One of them was out of tune. I know this because I happen to be a musician. The final clue in this insidious seasonal plot was the strange pleasantness exhibited by the managers at work. It's a strange experience to have the top boss of the site demanding to know whether I wanted parsnips for my Christmas lunch. The bad side of things is that I sustained an injury at work. One of those stupid ones too. Normally I do pay attention to health and safety in the workplace, especially since I went on a course and got a neat if somewhat useless certificate to prove it, but on this occaision, working under pressure and getting a little complacent, I reached inside the baling machine to remove some pesky excess cardboard and forgot to support my weight. So my foot slipped on the ledge I was using and my ribs connected rather sharply with the edge of the hatch. The machine won. Nothing broken - I think - but I've been on pain killers and lying in bed is excruciatingly uncomfortable. But never fear, Captain Compactor is still here, fighting for tidiness, cleanliness, and the chance to survive a Christmas lunch. Addiction, Blindness, & Other Issues Every break from work we assemble in the canteen or outside in the designated smoking area. In the canteen, discussion soon ebbs away as mobile devices begin to dominate peoples attention. This happened the other day while I was sat at the table, both my colleagues fixated by small electronic boxes and not responding to my attempts to converse. Jeez... I had no idea Roman history was that dull... Anyway I began to advise one colleague who was busy playing a game, furiously tapping his thumbs on various virtual buttons and staring at the screen wide eyed. You know, I said, computer gaming isn't good for you. It can cause difficulties with social interaction, repetitive strain injuries, eyesight degradation, and psychological addiction. "Huh?" He said after a pause lasting several minutes. He had won. He showed me the 'victory' screen, and stared at me with a happy gaze of someone who has battled demons, robots, falling shapes, strange bouncy balls, and survived. Happiness at work? I hope the boss doesn't see that. "Just like you and your flight simulators then?" Said another colleague. Yes I suppose so. Oh, there goes the buzzer. Back to work fellas.... Christmas Lunch Of The Year The confirmation of my fears that Christmas was back again came with the company seasonal lunch. It was an odd affair, with a senior Japanese delegate expecting all sorts of party atmosphere and getting a load of people staring at mobile devices in a desperate bid to escape reality. One colleague refused to pull his Christmas cracker on the grounds that it was silly. So I pulled it for him, gave him the enclosed joke, and handed him the plastic moustache that came as the gift. Oh how we laughed. Of course it wasn't all bad. Parsnips aside, the lunch was reasonable quality and given the normal diet of stale baguettes, curries, sandwiches, and crisps, it made a welcome relief especially because we didn't have to pay for it. But the best thing was seeing one of the admin ladies in tight jeans and high boots. Good grief. I had no idea the workplace was so exciting. Caldrail's Inevitable Xmas Message Have fun. No really. Stop shooting each other, arguing with your partner, swimming the cold Mediterranean, debating the oncoming disaster of Donald Trump, and just have fun, so the BBC News doesn't have to be so endlessly morbid. Or if smiling is too hard, buy each other mobile devices so you're too busy saving civilisation to argue. Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Archeologists call it the Stanegate Line, but as far as I know, it had no special name other than Rome's furthest Brittanic frontier.

I don't think anyone bothered to document it. But I do imagine it was a considerable entourage.

There are some commonalities in their alphabets but only a few greek loanwords in Etruscan, which is one of a couple of dozen languages spoken in Italy until the dominance of Latin in the 1st century ad (and even then, the dominance is paternal in nature and tied to occupations - there is evidence that via maternal influence the languages remained in dwindling use within Italian society for some time afterward)

Ah yes, and I've seen it stated that he had designs on replacing the Roman Caesar (presumably Tiberius), which I find ridiculous. I don't doubt he was seeking some form of local power. This wasn't impossible, even under Roman domination, as the Roman governor would simply deal with the native government in day to day affairs, but I imagine that Pilate wasn't going to settle for disruption in his province. He was after all a very pro-Roman governor eventually recalled for upsetting the Judaeans with overt displays of Roman symbols. As it was, he acted in typical governor mode. The local elite didn't like our vocal carpenter (and religious activist remember) but unable to stop him, they complained to Pilate. Since Judaean law wasn't going to work, Pilate simply looked for a reason under Roman law to stop him, and found treason/rebellion as his sufficient to have him dealt with. People certainly did advance themselves from time to time. A more successful story was a school teacher who got it into his head to become an elite, raising a small army in Gaul. The Caesar concerned was told that the former teacher was motivated to protect him from threat and got rewarded with a large income and title made permanent.

I don't like the way that the article seperates 'legitimate' and 'illegal' emperors. Since there was no official post in Roman government called 'Emperor', neither category was any better than the other legally, although I suppose I have to accept that acceptance was an important key to success. But the point here is that all these usurpers are known of, despite some having dubious provenance. I was thinking more of those whose attempts to gain power escaped historical attention.

Another local newsletter fell through my letter box the other day. It seems our fair town of Swindon wants to change, wants to progress, wants to become a cultural vanguard. Yeah? Really? The civic leaders and planners trumpeted that line thirty years ago, which shows how little vanguarding they managed to achieve. One of their former pet projects, the 'circus tent' market hall, is to be demolished which has alarmed local traders who can't afford the high street premises. The planners haven't said so, but clearly that building wasn't the success they dreamed of. Worse is yet to come. Finally approving a plan to restore the old Victorian era Locarno building, currently a burned out shell, what do I see? Restaurants. Lots of restaurants. Swindon was once known for having the greatest concentration of drinking dens in one square mile, now it wants to be known as the place where you stuff yourself silly. As if it has escaped the attention of planners that many of our local restaurant premises are vacant or closed for business. But it seems you can't have culture without places to consume expensive gourmet food. Hmmm... But most of those premises aren't open commercially.... A Bird In The Rafters At work I left the rest area and headed back toward the warehouse floor, a daily ritual that one must complete with strict adherence to the timetable or suffer the wrath of management. On this particular day I met a guy by the forklift garage, holding an extensible plastic rod that was wobbling right up the top of our modern tin shack. A bird was trying to nest in the steel beam rafters. Not the usual pigeon - those birds seem to nest anywhere and don't much care who walks underneath - but a large heron, a bird more accustomed to natural waterside surroundings. I watched as it got fed up of being prodded and effortlessly winged its way to another perch, where it would await another prodding. Lovely bird, but it can't stay in the warehouse. I wonder why it came inside? To find a safe nesting spot? Seeking a warmer nesting spot? Or perhaps it was looking for a restaurant? Working With Machines One job I regularly undertake is compacting cardboard and plastic rubbish in hydraulic baling machines. They're powerful beasties, crushing the waste with 3,000lbs/sq in (Hey, imperial measurements buddy - we're talking Brexit here). The amount of packaging used by car parts suppliers is enormous and you would expect it to be, since each article has to arrive at the production line absolutely spotless and perfect. The only problem is of course that I have to let the other two shifts use 'my' machines when I'm not there, and what a mess they make. Wires not properly installed making it difficult to extract the finished bale, or more usually, simply over-filling the machine until it isn't possible to bale it at all. Oh no. They've done it again. So I have to open the doors and let the rubbish cascade out onto the floor and repack it properly. And stop well meaning colleagues from trying to stop the rubbish coming out. Life is full of action and adventure in waste management. The managers of course know the problem exists. They would do - I've told them - but nothing seems to improve. Oh well. At least there's been no weekend working for me to put right. One of the welding robots stopped working and its replacement caught fire. Technology is great isn't it? Election Ploy Of The Week Okay, against all odds, Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes and that makes him President-Elect. But what do I hear? One party in America has decided the voting system has been hacked, and wants a recount. If enough states do that, and it only needs one or two, Hilary Clinton is technically the winner. Imagine that? Of course if Donald gets trumped at the last call - can they do that in America? - Clinton would likely be the least popular president ever. Now there's an achievement.

It begs the question who else has been forgotten because they didn't succeed? The Romans loved success, status, and spoils. Although not as 'Winner Takes All' as the Greeks, they did share many of the same predilictions.

Stronger, yes, because he didn't have to run 26 miles and instead walked carrying a heavier load and potentially perform much more arduous physical tasks. The Romans deliberately aimed to strengthen their troops using practice shields and dummy weapons heavier than the real thing, and regularly. That said, I doubt many Roman legionaries were capable of running a modern marathon.

I think Polybius had it right back in 150BC. He had the same idea as me in that nation states exhibit birth, growth, maturity, and declining old age, assuming violence or other disaster don't overcome them.