Notices by RolloTreadway (rollotreadway@beige.party)

@anon_opin Ernest Marples.

Dr Beeching was hired to produce a report within certain parameters, and he did so. He made no decisions and no judgements.

Marples - the transport minister who owned one of the country's largest road construction firms - was the one responsible for both commissioning and imposing the recommendations in the Beeching report.

That everyone associates the disastrous decision with a blameless engineer doing his job, and not with a wealthy Tory politician with blatant conflicts of interest, says a lot about this country.

@skinnylatte Sorry to be pedantic: Conservative, not LibDem.

@astronomerritt Crisps please.

I'm really glad that the long-running English coastal path project is finally on the verge of completion. It's a very good thing and I've been following its development over many years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0dxexdd8xo

But for crying out loud does *everything* have to be named after royal people now? This is nuts. Do you know what the coastal path in Wales is called? It's called the Wales Coast Path/Llwybr Arfordir Cymru. It's not named after anyone. Because why would it be? The whole damn point is that the sea and the shore belong to all of us.

And we've all seen the stories about councils and public bodies having to figure out what to do with all the things with the name Prince Andrew attached to them, perhaps there's a lesson there about not naming things after people purely because they happen to have a particular ancestor.

What a shitty way to blemish an otherwise deeply good bit of news. Stop with the grovelling already.

</rant>

Friends in England, a message for you.

I have periodically posted this before, but it's been a while since I last did, and I was putting my pills into my pill organiser and thought of it.

If you regularly have prescriptions, you do NOT need to pay for them all. This isn't terribly well advertised, and lots of people go through life never needing a repeat prescription then suddenly finding they need lots (me, I did this, up until I was 42 my only regular medicine was an antihistamine, now I have a full pill organiser).

A pre-pay prescription certificate can be purchased for a year and costs a little less than the price of 12 prescriptions (£114.50 compared to £118.80 if you have one prescription a month for a year). You can buy for this in instalments by direct debit, you don't have to stump it up all in one go.

You can also buy a three-month certificate for £32.50 (slightly more than the cost of three prescriptions).

These prices are fixed. It costs the same whether you're getting one prescription a month or ten. If you have at least one a month then the yearly certificate WILL save you money.

Everyone in England who pays for prescriptions is eligible.

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/help-nhs-prescription-costs/nhs-prescription-prepayment-certificate-ppc

@skinnylatte Why would anyone think lentils can't be snacks? Even in Britain - hardly the global capital of inventive snack development - lentil-based snacks have been around for ages.

@eleanorrees @afewbugs At work, we get asked annually if we'd recommend our ambulance service to friends and family.

You know, I'm not convinced many people use our ambulances out of choice. I don't think a lot of stroke patients spend their time checking to see how we're rated on trustpilot before dialling 999.

@skinnylatte I have bookmarked that page so I can look for recipes for all of the ones I don't know.

Another album that I liked in 2025, chosen at random.

76. Gyedu-Blay Ambolley & his Sekondi Band - Wake Up Afrika
https://blayambolley.bandcamp.com/album/wake-up-afrika

A giant of Ghanaian highlife and funk, still fierce and thrilling as he nears the end of his eighth decade. This is an album with a message, a call to action, for Ghanaians and people across Africa to take control of their own lives and fight against corruption and colonialism.

And the music is superb, all the energetic jazzy sound and deep bass that you'd expect from a Ghanaian highlife legend, and rapping in a voice that remains strong despite the passing of time.

#2025music #music

@dillyd He'll find it easier to swallow if he's not upside down.

@0xabad1dea Must be like being a little human, and meeting an adult human who's bigger than a house.

Do you ever open someone's profile, look at their posts, and then forget you're looking at someone's profile and wonder why your timeline is full of one person and some other people you don't know?

@skinnylatte I always find this extraordinary. Britain is hardly a country that treats homelessness decently, far from it - but the American approach seems completely unhinged. I don't understand it.

It's twenty past nine at night and someone is using an angle grinder. What kind of angle needs grinding at this time of night? Leave those angles be until morning!

@afewbugs I have a suspicion, completely unsupported by evidence, that racist gardeners are probably very committed to ensuring that nothing in their garden is wild and free, and that everything is strictly controlled with weedkillers and slug pellets and that sort of thing.

@RickiTarr Only by being drug free can one show true ctlrfchrp.

@skinnylatte Despite being from Wales, I really struggle with gloomy days (and it's getting worse as I get older, for some reason). I can imagine how much harder it must be if you're not from an island in the north Atlantic.

@RickiTarr I'm in a terraced house, so if the stairs don't go to my attic then they must go to the neighbour's attic. I'll go around and ask them if they're aware of this.

I went for a walk in the woods. And saw a deer! Right in front of me, I rounded a corner and there it was, grazing at the side of the path. It bounced away as soon as it noticed me, of course, I am a large clumsy human.

Today's #TuneTuesday theme is #LegendaryGuitarWork. Not generally my kind of topic. Still I can suggest something: Maggot Brain by Funkadelic, ten minutes of brilliance recorded in a single take.

George Clinton asked Eddie to play as if he'd just been told that his mother had died. Whatever the rationale - and I don't imagine George was entirely sober at the time - it certainly had an effect.

Friends, the great Eddie Hazel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOKn33-q4Ao