NO! That Is Not A Typo
It is an hilarious pun, hilarious I tell you - laugh or it's the Remote Nuclear Tormentor for you! Art?
Quite possibly a Remote Nuclear Tormentor
You see, I am trying to combine two different elements from Janet Macdonald's "Supplying The British Army In The First World War", which has been a fascinating and verrrry detailed account of that activity on an industrial scale. You ought to recall, from an earlier item about sugar profiteers, General Long, who was a canny customer equally as adept at challenging the profiteers as they were at exploiting the system. Art!
Refrigerated meat storage in a ship's hold
Moving from sucrose to protein, Great Britain* imported the majority of it's meat supplies (up to 80%), from South Canada, Argentina and Australia as the primary suppliers. This meant using refrigerated ships, keeping the meat preserved at sub-zero temperatures, a quantum step beyond mere salting or smoking.
When war broke out, the government requisitioned all those ships with frozen meat transport capabilities in order to supply said viands to the Army. This meat needed to then be assessed and inspected for fitness to be consumed, a process that did not sit well with the meat-packing companies supplying the meat, who wanted to be able to set their own prices and sell to whomever they wanted to. Art!
More like Bottomms; recalled and condemned as unfit
So, to try and get round these restrictions, the meat-packers attempted to import substandard meat that would have failed Army inspection, which they could then sell at a huge markup after it's rejection.
General Long, whose rodeo experience was extensive, arranged with the inspectors to have all this meat condemned as 'unfit for human consumption', which meant it was destroyed rather than passed along the retail chain. Art!
Smithfield Meat Market circa 1914
To get around this - O my these capitalist carnivores loved their profit margins - the meat-packers tried sending the inferior meat direct to London to avoid inspection at divers British ports. General Long, however, whose rodeo experience was extensive, was one step ahead of them and had forewarned the London health authorities of this trick. They pounced upon this meat, condemned and destroyed it, HA! take that mendacious meat-packers. Condemnation of their supplies meant £0.00 return, so they gave up. Art!
Further to supplying the British army, there were various missions to Tsarist Ruffia, at Murmansk, Archangelsk and Novorossisk, as well as in Western Siberia in the Kurgan Oblast - map above. These continued to be operational after the Bolshevik Revolution, supplying their British garrisons and the 'White' Ruffian (pro-Tsar) forces. In retrospect, they were too small, inefficient and regularly looted to be able to support the Whites properly, yet they made splendid propaganda vehicles for the Bolsheviks
ANYWAY Art!
NO! This is Kurgan in 1914, not today. Bite your tongue! To show how serious the Whites were about plundering - sorry, 'fighting the Bolsheviks' - look at indent they placed at the British depot there:
580 cigars
58 pounds of confectionery
60 pairs of silk stockings
30 yards of dress fabric
85 tablets of perfumed soap
38 bottles of eau-de-cologne
29 bottles of perfume
The three British soldiers who formally signed for issuing these 'stores' were doubtless in on the scam, and were dismissed from the service. Ol' Jan does not recount how they managed to get from Western Siberia back to Great Britain*, or if they managed at all.
So there you have it, an example of probity and integrity in General Long, and another example of how the orc's magpie genes have not changed in over a century.
The 'Gift Of Anne'
Which, in Welsh, is 'Ynys Gifftan'. I am talking about a tidal island in the Drywyd Estuary in - you may be ahead of me here - Wales. Art!
Ynys gifftan
This is from a recent news item on my feed, as it is now on the market for only (!) £350,000. Part of the estate agent blurb reads "The property occupies a unique and tranquil position" because it's a tidal island, normally cut off by the tide and only accessible by foot at low tide.
You may not remember, although Conrad does, that many many years ago we had a whole slew of items dealing with British tidal islands here on BOOJUM! as I think they are quite cool. In fact we covered Ynys Gifftan in May of 2017.
BOOJUM!: Oldham: Overhwhelmed?
The major problem for any potential purchaser is that there are no jetties or wharves on the island, meaning you cannot land, or easily or safely land, anything from a boat, so anything it requires will need to be carried over by foot or taken over by helicopter. A rather expensive way to do the weekly shop. O, nor do they have electricity or running water, which is another reason it was abandoned 60 years ago.
More Of Meat, Metaphorically
One of the purchases I made at BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM in September was 'Meat Grinder' by Prit Buttar, which I have now gotten around to reading. Art!
The main part of this work describes the battles for the Rzhev salient, a giant tentacle of Nazi-occupied Soviet territory that was fought over with frightening intensity and then quietly abandoned in the aftermath of Stalingrad. Art!
Prit himself is an interesting character. He read Medicine at Oxford, qualified as a doctor, joined the British army as a Medical Officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps, went into general practice when he left and is now an authority on the Eastern Front of both First and Second Unpleasantnesses. Hobbies include astrophotography, which is a cut above following a football club. I have a couple of his books on the Eastern Front as of the First Unpleasantness in my Book Mountain. If I read these in future I shall let you know. Conrad bets you can hardly wait.
Talking Of Food Safety -
Conrad noticed this yesteryon and we now have more details. Art!
The charges relate to food products including pizza and hummus found to be up to two weeks beyond their sell-by-date, back in 2024. Now you know why retail staff on the shop floor will move product left at the back of the chiller to the front, so that this type of failure does not happen. One can also speculate that the Store Manager, and the relevant Department Manager, were either fired or demoted and transferred out, because the buck lands with these people. For one thing, it damages the brand, and although nobody was reportedly ill thanks to eating dodgy food, that's always a risk as well. I wonder where the fine was paid from, at the corporate level or that individual store in Barnsley?
O Aye 'Factbytes' Again
One image I snipped weeks ago and haven't gotten around to posting until right now. Art!
The main reason is because there were so few of them. We will omit the Panther as it wasn't the heaviest Teuton panzer by a long way, and instead begin with the Tiger tank. Art!
Tiger I
Total produced, 1,350. Which might sound like a lot except not really. Compare it to the Sinister's Josef Stalin, where they made 3,850 of the Mark II version and 2,300 of the Mark III, or over 4 times as many. Then we have the Tiger II. Art!
Total made = 490. About a third of it's predecessor. Stretching the 'tank' definition a bit, there is the Jagdtiger. Art!Tiger II
Total made = 88 (or possibly as few as 70). The bigger the vehicle the more time-consuming they are to make, and the more resources they hog, and given Teuton over-engineering, the more expensive they are, and given Teuton engine inadequacy, the more likely to break down. Note that the total of all three of these AFVs comes to less than the lower number of JSIIIs.
Finally -
"The road to success is always under construction" - Arnold Palmer
* Take that, Lavrov!
