And quiet flows the Don

Here's the river we've been trailing all the way up to Sheffield. The Don was once a jet-black flowing cess pit of pollution but since the 1970s it's been cleaned up and now salmon and other fishes spawn and thrive in its rushing waters.That's a nice little success story that's no-body shouts about for some odd reason.

Masbrough and Millmoor: nothing to see here ...

As our train slowly drags its weary way up the Don valley we pass through what was once the dark Satanic mills country of south Yorkshire; a place of coal mines, iron works and heavy engineering that once led the world but is now a land  struggling to find a use for itself. I doubt Sir Walter Scott ever ventured up here to find romantic inspiration for his twaddle tales of derring-do ... So here in Rotherham, a place that has know better times, is Masbrough or Masborough (depending on who is doing the spelling, I favour leaving out the 'o'; I don't pronounce it so it's not there ... it is said that Middlesbrough, a town near to where I was born, is so because the Town Clerk couldn't spell ... But I'm digressing again)  where was I? oh yes, Masbrough, a suburb of Rotherham just across the river, comes to us as a passing, fleeting view of an old unwanted station. This was once the main station for Rotherham, from the 1840s until the mid 1980s.  All we have now is an unused platform and some railway buildings which I read are now a restaurant but it was once a thriving, busy station, you can read more here. The station's last use was for 'football specials' which leads us neatly onto the next picture ...

This is a really bad picture of  Millmoor football stadium once home to various Rotherham football clubs over the years until Rotherham United were thrown out for not paying the rent a few years ago. The place, I read, is the home of Westfield United of The Bud Evans BD U18 Division 5 which is quite possibly the least exciting piece of information I've ever found out in my entire life... a paper ran a piece on the place should you need cheering up ...

Conisbrough

At fifty or so miles an hour this is about as much of Conisbrough as I manged to spot from the train on our way to Sheffield the other day. Still it's enough, I think. I've been trying to find out something about this place and well, here goes. The castle, you've noticed the castle I take it, big old Norman keep, recently reroofed and famed as the inspirational source for Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. He called the place Coningsburgh so no-one would know ... I admit I've never read the book, (who reads that stuff these days?) but as a child I was suitable appalled by Roger Moore's acting in the TV series ... 

Erm what else? Oh yes; Kilner jars originated here but went bust way back in 1937. There was an Earth Centre I recall it was some sort millennium thing (there was a great madness about the land at that time) consisting of a big hole in the ground or former colliery or former glass works (Kilner's Works? I dont know or care much. It's all a bad memory best forgotten)  into which money (>£41 million!! as I say madness was stalking the country) was poured à la Maynard Keynes. It had an ecological theme that, quite naturally, failed to appeal and no-one could be bothered to visit so it went bust and is now a housing estate I hear. There's also Archers Way which once had another, sillier name but you can search for that yourself. 

I'm sure Conisbrough is a nice place. It certainly has a very long history, the Old English Cyningesburh was recorded back in 1000, and if I had the time and inclination I could tell more ... it's just that we went through at fifty miles an hour and it's gone now...

A River Runs Through It

The theme for the City Daily Photo's start of the month shindig is 'brown'. Since there runs a big streak of glorious brown stuff right through the heart of town what else could I post other than another view of the river. As ever it's a symphony of browns. The river is empty now and rarely used, you know it's bad when they decide to turn the old dry docks on the right into a heritage feature; mind you I said they should do that years ago ...

Something will turn up

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." 

                                                                                                                     Charles Dickens

There is a saying that any noun can be verbed and vice versa: the technical term for this trickery is anthimeria; it is one of the useful features of the English language. However turning an adjective into a noun, well, it just sticks in the craw .... "Find your extraordinary"  is the dumb, illiterate slogan of the University of Hull¹. With such a stupid motto it comes as little surprise that the English course at this establishment has slipped down to 75th in subject ranking. This is a sorry fall indeed for a department that was once one of the leading English departments in the country (well it was when Margot got her First there, way back when we were all a lot younger). It should also not surprise anyone that the university's overall ranking is 81st though this is a rise of 13 places from last year (source The complete university guide : the Guardian has the place ranked 106!). The university has already had to make £15 million cutbacks and now announces a further £25 million. Clearly all that building of student residential accommodation was not cheap (I've seen a figure of £28.5 million for one block alone; though the loss of a cricket pitch is beyond calculation...) and a new sports centre didn't exactly come free (£17 million) and there's the undisclosed costs of sponsoring the UK's Olympic Team (Team GB) (Why on earth? Just why? Bonkers!) which leads to the Vice Chancellor saying the “plummeting league table results are “untenable””  (really?) and things will get worse before they improve (if they ever do). 

Now it really should not have come as such a surprise that the expansion of this place was a bubble that could not grow forever; that massive expenditure might not bring in the revenue expected. The university, along with many others, has overestimated revenue: in short the result, as Micawber could have told them, is misery ... and cuts (approaching 10% of spending)  to staff and courses will only reduce teaching quality, feeding back to lower student intake and so on ... The intention is to have a smaller but better University; well smaller is easily done; better is much harder to achieve and does not automatically follow cutbacks.

I find it extraordinary (that much abused adjective again) that anyone would choose to come to this place let alone pay at least £9,250 per year in tuition fees plus living costs and leave with debts of £40,000 for a piece of paper that says you have met the academic approval of the University of Hull (whoop! whoop!). So let me tell you that, extraordinarily, 16,000 students are enrolled here. I wish them well.


¹I wonder if the U of H knew, I'm sure it did due diligence (didn't it?), that "Find your extraordinary" is the title of one of those odd books designed to spur entrepreneurs onto bigger and better things. It has the subtitle "Dream Bigger, Live Happier, and Achieve Success on Your Own Terms" (no really it does!)... You'd think entrepreneurs would not have time to read such tosh but then again business folk have put the U of H in its present parlous position so maybe it's required reading. You can find this essential guide on Amazon and suchlike places and no, I'm not putting up a link, go find you own extraordinary

Dialogue of the deaf

On Monday this week our House of Commons huffed and puffed and denied the Government's motion to have an election on December 12. On Tuesday, the very next day, our House of Commons met and over a period of several hours, with votes to see if amendments could be put forward (passed),  said amendments (to let 16 year olds and EU nationals vote in the election!!!???) then rightly rejected by Mr Deputy Speaker, then finally and solemnly passed a bill by an overwhelming majority to allow an election on ... December 12. 

So the great conversation will begin, or rather the uncivil shouting match will continue, with neither side listening to the other, cue much media bias, expect revelations about the PM's private life, about the Labour leader's senility, how the NHS will be sold to the USA, how Labour will turn the UK into Venezuela ...  all very nice and all no doubt true. But there is really only one issue: Leaving the god forsaken European Union as soon as possible or letting the possibility of leaving slide into the mire of Labour and Liberal Democrat betrayal. So, though I cannot possibly vote Conservative myself, I hope for a thumping great Tory landslide, a clear majority to get the UK out once and for all. Vote Boris!

I have shown these two distant friends before here and here.

Leaf Fall

A little seasonal colour here on Cottingham Road, near the University.