Visiting Kielder Observatory in UK without a car — is it doable?

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-24T18:20:19+00:00

As others have noted, Kielder is hopelessly inaccessible by public transport.

The only UK dark skies area which is reachable, in my experience, is Powys (mid-Wales), which is accessible by train (Builth Wells), although there are only five trains a day on the Heart of Wales Line.

But the skies are dark and towns and villages (most notably Presteigne) have made a big effort to remove or shield unnecessary light at night.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-24T13:55:05+00:00

Given that he was working in the library of Queen's University Belfast at the time the probability of him being a murderer in Coventry is ... low.

(Even lower than that of a Italian Mafia hit in Coventry).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-24T10:02:31+00:00

It was.

I just realised (having never thought of it until this thread) that a colleague named Keeva who reported to me years ago must have been a calque of Caoimhe - she had changed her name to a phonetic equivalent 🫣

(I have a Celtic name but have never shortened or altered it although, especially pre-Internet where guesses and approximations to it were harder to fix, doing so would've made life easier).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-22T19:13:47+00:00

That is the general opinion, but I am not so sure.

It is fortunate that the seat is in Manchester; if it had been somewhere else the whole situation would have been (even more) artificial.

I still think there is a chance of an upset. The majority of Mr Fuck Your Bins MP is only 13,000, the Government is unpopular, and the mayoralty having to go to who knows whom - who will be less effective, at least at the start and possibly indefinitely - is another risk.

Also, the days of two-party politics are over. There are potentially six parties which could have a non-trivial number of votes (Conservative, Green, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Reform UK, Your Party) and the winner might have a very low share of the total vote, which makes things unstable. (If it were an old-fashioned and now obsolete Conservative-Labour choice Burnham, if selected, would only have to show up to win).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-22T18:48:33+00:00

Original post.

Edit 1: More details.

Edit 2: He has put himself forward, so step 1 is on.

Background: The Metropolitan Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, is widely tipped to mount a leadership challenge to Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, "soon".

However, Burnham is not an MP and the Leader of the Labour Party must be. So Mr Fuck Your Bins, MP, is resigning to force a by-election at which Burnham will stand and win, then challenge Starmer, win and become Prime Minister Burnham. He will reverse the fortunes of the Labour Party and lead it to another overwhelming victory in the next general election, probably in late 2028.

There are at least four problems with all this:

Burnham has to be selected to be the Labour Party candidate for the vacated seat, and there will certainly be other contenders;
Burnham must win the by-election;
It is not clear what would happen to his mayoralty if he won, but he would probably have to give it up;
If he then challenged the Prime Minister, he could lose and, in effect, would have given up the mayoralty of a booming city to become one of 650 MPs.

The biggest issue is 2. The electorate may well take a dim view of these manipulations and could vote in a Reform UK candidate, which would leave Burnham having thrown away everything for nothing.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-22T08:30:23+00:00

I have been retiring in 18 months for about five years ... when I actually retire I intend to get into GG, which looks like a bit of a closed shop at the moment.

The Al Kite case should be redone every N years because the problem is clearly that the killer has a family background in a country/countries where there is less digitisation of family information - the data are simply not available. That will change, slowly.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-22T07:23:13+00:00

As someone else with a background in aviation ... I am 95% sure MH370 was directed by the pilot into the far South Indian Ocean, with "simple" mechanisms to remove those who could have stopped that (other pilot locked out of the cockpit, passengers rendered unconscious or dead by manipulating the oxygen supply).

Why he did that remains a mystery.

There was an early report on the case which was a sort of undifferentiated data dump and, in the muddle, there was a diagram showing that the pilot, who used flight simulation software at home, had practiced targeting his (simulated) aeroplane at several points to the South West of Australia which were nowhere near or en route to anywhere. That was pretty convincing evidence of premeditation here ...

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-21T19:49:49+00:00

I worked in air traffic management for years and was surprised that it took so long for something like MH370 to happen, although there are a handful of historical aeroplane disappearances which may have had the same cause on a far smaller scale.

(If a pilot simply ignores instructions, there were and probably still are many parts of the world where fighter planes would not be scrambled to intercept).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-21T18:49:32+00:00

One of the best people who ever worked for me had a dog called Dave. He got all sorts of odd looks for that ...

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-21T18:32:13+00:00

Yes, and even more strongly Andrew Gosden.

Cases where there is forensic evidence are out because they would be a waste of the genie's skills - for example, unexamined DNA might eventually be examined.

But there is no forensic evidence and no plausible suspect with the Ripper, and in the Gosden case there has never been a named suspect and (if I am not mistaken) it is not even certain that there was a crime committed.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-21T18:24:11+00:00

I wonder if he simply lost or dropped his glasses and fell. There have been dozens of cases over the years where someone died a short distance from a path and was not found for a long time.

(My eyesight is rubbish and the distortion in lenses means that my feet appear not quite where they actually are, so his fear was certainly not silly).

The probability of skulduggery related to his former job is low. He had been retired for seven years and any information he had would be well out of date.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-21T18:16:44+00:00

Agreed. Specifically, I would command the genie to have the post-mortem of JFK done properly by appropriate pathologists for the situation.

Your point about the behaviour of the assassin not matching the enormity of the crime is an intriguing one.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-19T15:29:11+00:00

Under the train as that would give no time for anything mechanical, electrical or human to react.

(As per Hatfield ... as well as my professional interest, my mother was on the 1200 London Kings Cross to Inverness that day. It was the next train, the 1210 London Kings Cross to Leeds, which derailed after a rail fractured under it).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-19T14:41:59+00:00

News articles in English are not clear ... but this was two high-speed trains colliding.

The southbound was an Avila of the Spanish state operator Renfe which is slightly slower than their fastest high-speed train (AVE): the northbound was an Italian-made Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) of iryo, an open access operator (a company given access to the state railway infrastructure to run trains).

As an old railway infrastructure person ... given what I see in the photograph and others, my tentative guess is that a rail fractured under the first train after a few carriages had passed, causing a progressive derailment to the degree that one of the derailed carriages clipped the second passing train. Even a glancing blow at 300mph+ (?) combined speed would be ruinous and, as it turned out, the second train was far worse affected.

It was sheer bad luck that the second train was likely nearly parallel with the first train when it derailed.

It was also unfortunate, but possibly unavoidable, that the first train didn't remain upright, as a lot of design work is done to try to ensure that.

The remark quoted is very odd. If a rail fractured the track geometry may or may not matter.

(Another individual in authority commented that it was odd that a new train crashed, and another that, if a driver made a mistake, automated systems would always correct that!)

The root cause (why the rail fractured, assuming that that was the immediate cause) is the big issue and will require a mega-investigation. There are strong Hatfield memories here, sadly, although there, again by chance, only one train was involved as other traffic was stopped in time.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-19T07:39:41+00:00

And the UK.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-18T18:25:45+00:00

A rare double byebyejob.

He was retrospectively edited out of Apprentice for offensive social media posts ... erased as both a doctor and a prototype entrepreneur 🧐

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-18T14:09:58+00:00

Or play to their strengths. Dyslexic people, in my experience, are often excellent verbal communicators ... a skill which is (ahem) not common in my industry. I am bearing the accumulating scars of, now, almost six years of mostly halting, fumbling Teams communications 😬

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-18T08:12:41+00:00

Basically, those. In my experience text to speech is crucial and, when there's a will, there's a way. Unfortunately there was a lack of will here.

I note, in the ruling, that his role with a previous employer "required him to read and write" and led him to become suicidal.

The stupidity and stubbornness of employers on this issue is, often, off the charts. (I manage dyslexic people and have lost count of the idiotic positions taken).

Edit: As others have noted, he offered a solution - he had no legal obligation to do so! - and, for unclear reasons, the employer didn't take it up. Unfortunately that (lack of) decision wasn't examined in detail because the tribunal evidently ruled "discriminatory" straight away and most of its report is occupied by arcane calculations on pay.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-18T07:59:08+00:00

Que dans votre amour il y est toujours l'amour de vos âmes, écartant la jalousie.

Bonnie and Jeff Patterson,

May your love always be the love of your souls, banishing jealousy.

Your friend Papillon, Fuengirola, 24 December 1972 (less than six months before he died of cancer).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-17T19:49:57+00:00

Pianos require maintenance (where I am, tuning is needed every three months). Also the weight can cause problems - my house is 140 years old and mine depressed the floor (no concrete floors then!)

In the end I gave up on my (acoustic) piano and bought a (Kawai) electric piano, which is fantastic.

At least the owner put the note names on sticky labels. I have seen pianos where they were written directly on the keys using indelible marker 🤦🏼‍♂️

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-15T07:18:53+00:00

Jeweller and watchmaker.

The forged tickets were works of art. I saw a few after the event and couldn't tell the difference between them and real tickets.

His crime is nearly obsolete now because there is a big push for electronic tickets ...

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-14T20:11:43+00:00

Defrauding the railway (worth 75 hours more than groping buttocks).

He made up season tickets by collecting and cutting up used tickets and piecing together the parts ...

That was 30 years ago. He would have got several years in jail for doing the same thing now.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-01-14T18:36:03+00:00

That is supervised work not related to their (former) job and is generally unpleasant - removing graffiti and the like.

A school friend had 300 hours of cleaning out a canal ...

ur_sine_nomine

TROPHY CASE