BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, it employs over 20,950 staff in total. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time and fixed-contract staff are included; the BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture and Sport. Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee, charged to all British households and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts and iPlayer catch-up; the fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has funded the BBC World Service, which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, online services in Arabic and Persian.
Around a quarter of BBC revenues come from its commercial arm BBC Studios Ltd, which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC World News, from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. From its inception, through the Second World War, to the 21st century, the BBC has played a prominent role in British culture, it is known colloquially as "The Beeb", "Auntie", or a combination of both. Britain's first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920, it was sponsored by the Daily Mail's Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.
But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members. Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufactures, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast; the company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. To this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform and entertain"; the financial arrangements soon proved inadequate. Set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee.
The Committee recommended a short term reorganisation of licence fees with improved enforcement in order to address the BBC's immediate financial distress, an increased share of the licence revenue split between it and the GPO. This was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired; the BBC's broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, as was the prohibition on advertising. The BBC was banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00 and was required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee. By now, the BBC, under Reith's leadership, had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a public service rather than a commercial enterprise.
The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production, with restrictions on news bulletins waived, the BBC became the primary source of news for the duration of the crisis; the crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position. On one hand Reith was acutely aware that the Government might exercise its right to commandeer the BBC at any time as a mouthpiece of the Government if the BBC were to step out of line, but on the other he was anxious to maintain public trust by appearing to be acting independently; the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PM's own. Thus the BBC was granted sufficient leeway to pursue the Government's objectives in a manner of its own choosing; the resulting coverage of both striker and government viewpoints impressed millions of listeners who were unaware that the PM had broadcast to the nation from Reith's home, using one of Reith's sound bites inserted at the last moment
Green Flag Award
The Green Flag Award is the benchmark national standard for publicly accessible parks and green spaces in the United Kingdom. The scheme was set up in 1996 to recognise and reward green spaces in England and Wales that met the laid down high standards, it is seen as a way of encouraging others to achieve the same high environmental standards, creating a benchmark of excellence in recreational green areas. Any free to enter public park or green space is eligible to apply for an Award. Owned but publicly accessible parks have received awards such as Chavasse Park and Rutland Water; the scheme is owned by the government through the Department for Communities and Local Government, though it is managed by other agents under contract. A pilot scheme was started in 2007, in Scotland, three parks were given awards that year. Both primary and secondary schools may be awarded the Green Flag in recognition of steps taken towards making the school eco-friendly. Meanwhile, the award goes to other countries too for example to Germany.
Parks and green spaces are judged in April and May each year and the winners are announced in July. Parks must apply each year to keep their Green Flag Award, winning sites are eligible to fly a Green Flag in the park for a year. Sites for a Green Flag Award are judged against eight key criteria: A welcoming place Healthy and secure Clean and well maintained Sustainability Conservation and heritage Community involvement Marketing Management The Green Flag Award itself is for public-run open spaces, but the same scheme runs an award for community/charity-run public spaces, such as Millennium Greens and Doorstep Greens called the Green Pennant Award; this scheme, started in 2002, has adapted the criteria for voluntary organisations. Sites for a Green Pennant Award are judged against eight key criteria: A welcoming place Healthy and secure Well maintained and clean Environmental sustainability Biodiversity and heritage Community involvement Achievement Green Flag Award-winning sites, which are over thirty years old, may apply for Green Heritage Site Accreditation.
Green Flag is one of the steering group partners of Neighbourhoods Green, a partnership initiative which works with social landlords and housing associations to highlight the importance of, raise the overall quality of design and management for and green space in social housing. Between 2012 and 2017 both parties will be working to expand Green Flag Award into the social housing sector; the scheme was run by volunteers from its founding in the 1990s. It was sponsored by the government and run by the Civic Trust, till the latter went into administration in 2009. Since it has been managed by a consortium of Keep Britain Tidy, the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, the charity Greenspace. Judges continue to be unpaid volunteers with competence in the management of parks. Green Flag Award - home page
Great Depression in the United Kingdom
The Great Depression in the United Kingdom known as the Great Slump, was a period of national economic downturn in the 1930s, which had its origins in the global Great Depression. It was Britain's most profound economic depression of the 20th century; the Great Depression originated in the United States in late 1929 and spread to the world. Britain had never experienced the boom that had characterized the U. S. Germany and Australia in the 1920s, so its effect appeared less severe. Britain's world trade fell by half, the output of heavy industry fell by a third, employment profits plunged in nearly all sectors. At the depth in summer 1932, registered unemployed numbered 3.5 million, many more had only part-time employment. Hardest hit by economic problems were the industrial and mining areas in the north of England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Unemployment reached 70% in some areas at the start of the 1930s and many families depended on payments from local government known as the dole. Politically the Conservative Party dominated the era and the Labour Party was hurt.
The Great Depression of 1929–32 broke out at a time when the United Kingdom was still far from having recovered from the effects of the First World War. Economist Lee Ohanian showed that economic output fell by 25% between 1918 and 1921 and did not recover until the end of the Great Depression, arguing that the United Kingdom suffered a twenty-year great depression beginning in 1918. Relative to the rest of the world, economic output declined mildly in the UK between 1929 and 1934. Heavy industries which formed the bedrock of Britain's export trade were concentrated in certain areas of Britain, such as northern England, South Wales, Northern Ireland and central Scotland, while the newer industries were concentrated in southern and central England. British industrial output during the 1920s ran at about 80–100%, exports at about 80% of their pre-war levels. From about 1921, Britain had started a slow economic recovery from the subsequent slump, but in April 1925, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, on advice from the Bank of England, restored the Pound Sterling to the gold standard at its prewar exchange rate of $4.86 US dollars to one pound.
This made the pound convertible to its value in gold, but at a level that made British exports more expensive on world markets. The price of gold was over-estimated by 10–14% leading to coal and steel as an export becoming less competitive; the economic recovery was slowed. To offset the effects of the high exchange rate, the export industries tried to cut costs by lowering workers' wages; the industrial areas spent the rest of the 1920s in recession, these industries received little investment or modernization. Throughout the 1920s, unemployment stayed at a steady one million. In May 1929, a minority Labour government headed by Ramsay MacDonald came to office with Liberal support; this was only the second time a Labour government had been in office, few of the government's members had any deep knowledge of economics or experience of running the economy. MacDonald's Labour Party was not radical in economic thinking, was wedded to the orthodoxy of classical economics with its emphasis on maintaining a balanced budget at any cost.
In October 1929, the Stock Market Crash in New York heralded the worldwide Great Depression. John Maynard Keynes, who had not predicted the slump, said, "'There will be no serious direct consequences in London. We find the look ahead decidedly encouraging."Doomsayers on the left such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, J. A. Hobson, G. D. H. Cole repeated the dire warnings they had been making for years about the imminent death of capitalism, only now far more people paid attention. Starting in 1935 the Left Book Club provided a new warning every month, built up the credibility of Soviet-style socialism as an alternative; the ensuing American economic collapse shook the world: World trade contracted, prices fell and governments faced financial crisis as the supply of American credit dried up. Many countries adopted an emergency response to the crisis by erecting trade barriers and tariffs, which worsened the crisis by further hindering global trade; the British Empire tried to hang together by lower tariffs among the members while raising them against the U.
S. and others. The effects on the industrial areas of Britain were immediate and devastating, as demand for British products collapsed. By the end of 1930, unemployment had more than doubled from 1 million to 2.5 million, exports had fallen in value by 50%. During this time there were little to no unemployment benefits, so this mass unemployment lead to many of Britain’s population becoming impoverished. Government revenues contracted as national income fell, while the cost of assisting the jobless rose; the industrial areas were hardest hit, along with the coal mining districts. London and the south-east of England were hurt less. In 1933, 30% of Glaswegians were unemployed due to the severe decline in heavy industry. Under pressure from its Liberal allies as well as the Conservative opposition, the Labour government appointed a committee to review the state of public finances; the May Report of July 1931 urged public sector wage cuts and large cuts in public spending to avoid incurring a budget deficit.
The sense was that the deficit had to be reduced.
William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire
William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire MP was an English nobleman and courtier. William Cavendish was the second son of Sir William Cavendish and Bess of Hardwick, he was educated with the children of George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, whom his mother married after his father's death. She made him a rich allowance in his youth, he entered Clare College, Cambridge. He was M. P. for Liverpool in 1586 and Newport in 1588. He was appointed High Sheriff of Derbyshire, where the estates of his family lay, for 1595 and Justice of the Peace in 1603, he was created Baron Cavendish of Hardwick in 1605, thanks to the representations of his niece, Arbella Stuart. He participated in the colonisation of the Bermudas, Devonshire Parish was called after him, his mother's death in 1608, his elder brother Henry's death in 1616, gave him a vast fortune. He was in attendance on James I in a progress in Wiltshire in 1618, on 2 August was created Earl of Devonshire, while the court was staying at the Bishop of Salisbury's palace.
He died on 3 March 1626, was buried at St Peter's Church, Edensor. The 1st Earl of Devonshire and his brother Henry are commemorated through the Cavendish Memorial inside the church, a magnificent early-17th-century church monument, his first wife was Anne Kighley or Keighley, daughter of Henry Kighley of Keighley, circa 21 March 1580. They had three sons and three daughters, including: William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire Frances Cavendish, married William Maynard, 1st Baron Maynard Gilbert, credited with the authorship of Horae Subsecivae, died young James, died in infancyCavendish's second wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Boughton of Couston, widow of Sir Richard Wortley of Wortley, Yorkshire, by whom he had a son, made a knight of the Bath when Prince Charles was created Prince of Wales in 1618. Sir John died on 18 January 1618. History of Parliament CAVENDISH, William II of Chatsworth and Hardwick, DerbysAttribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Cavendish, William".
Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900
Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal in England is part of the British canal system. Its main line ends in Birmingham, stretching for 137 miles with 166 locks, it has arms to places including Leicester, Aylesbury and Northampton. The Grand Union Canal was the original name for part of what is now part of the Leicester Line of the modern Grand Union: this latter is now referred to as the Old Grand Union Canal to avoid ambiguity. With competition from the railways having taken a large share of traffic in the second half of the 19th century, improvements in roads and vehicle technology in the early part of the 20th century meant that the lorry was becoming a threat to the canals. Tolls had been reduced to compete with the railways, but there was little scope for further reduction; the Regent's Canal and the Grand Junction Canal agreed that amalgamation and modernisation were the only way to remain competitive. The Grand Union Canal in its current form came into being on 1 January 1929, was further extended in 1932.
It was formed from the amalgamation of several different canals, at 286.3 miles, is by far the longest merged canal in the UK, whilst the Leeds & Liverpool Canal for being 127 miles and having parts of the now-extinct southern end of the Lancaster Canal, is considered the longest single Canal in the UK: London areaRegent's Canal – original company Hertford Union Canal – bought by the Regent's Canal in 1857Main LineWarwick and Napton Canal – bought by the Regent's Canal in 1927 Warwick and Birmingham Canal – bought by the Regent's Canal in 1927 Birmingham and Warwick Junction Canal – bought by the Regent's Canal in 1927 Grand Junction Canal – bought by the Regent's Canal in 1927Leicester LineOld Grand Union Canal – bought by the Grand Junction in 1894 Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Union Canal – bought by the Grand Junction in 1894 Leicester Navigation – bought by the Grand Union in 1932 Loughborough Navigation – bought by the Grand Union in 1932 Erewash Canal – bought by the Grand Union in 1932A 5-mile section of the Oxford Canal forms the main line of the Grand Union between Braunston and Napton.
Although the Grand Union intended to buy the Oxford Canal and Coventry Canal, this did not take place. The section of the main line between Brentford and Braunston, was built as a'wide' or'broad' canal – that is, its locks were wide enough to accommodate two narrowboats abreast or a single wide barge up to 14 feet in beam. However, the onward sections from Braunston to Birmingham had been built as'narrow' canals – that is, the locks could accommodate only a single narrowboat. An Act of Parliament of 1931 was passed authorising a key part of the modernisation scheme of the Grand Union, supported by Government grants; the narrow locks between Napton and Camp Hill Top Lock in Birmingham were rebuilt to take widebeam boats or barges up to 12 feet 6 inches in beam, or two narrowboats. The canal was dredged and bank improvements carried out: the depth was increased to 5 feet 6 inches to allow heavier cargoes, the minimum width increased to 26 feet to enable two boats of 12 feet 6 inches to pass. Lock works were completed in 1934 when the Duke of Kent opened the new broad locks at Hatton, other improvements finished by 1937.
However, these improvements to depth and width were never carried out between London. Camp Hill Locks in Birmingham were not widened, as it would have been expensive and of little point, since they lead only to further flights of locks not in the ownership of the Grand Union. A new basin and warehouse were constructed above Camp Hill, to deal with this. Although the Grand Union company had a number of broad boats built to take advantage of the improvements, they never caught on and the canal continued to be operated by pairs of narrow boats, whose journeys were facilitated by the newly widened locks in which they could breast up; the three sections between Norton junction and the River Trent are mixed in size. From Norton to Foxton, the route is a narrow canal. From below Foxton to Leicester it is a wide canal. From Leicester to the Trent, the route is the River Soar and the locks and bridges are wide. Another Act of 1931 authorised the widening of the locks at Watford and Foxton, but with Government grants for this section not forthcoming, the work was not carried out.
The Grand Union Canal was nationalised in 1948, control transferring to the British Transport Commission, in 1962 to the British Waterways Board British Waterways. Commercial traffic continued to decline ceasing in the 1970s, though lime juice was carried from Brentford to Boxmoor until 1981, aggregates on the River Soar until 1996. However, leisure traffic took over, the canal is now as busy as it was, with leisure boating complemented by fishing, towpath walking and gongoozling. More freight traffic has returned with the carriage of aggregates from Denham to West Drayton in barges and narrow boats, the opening of a new wharf for re-cyclables and aggregates at Old Oak Common. One end of the Grand Union Canal is at Brentford on the River Thames in west London, where the canal follows the engineered course of the Brent; the double Thames Lock at Brentford separates the Tideway administered by the Port of London Authority from the River Brent/Grand Union Canal, administered by the Canal & River Trust.
The locks on the canal are numbered: numbered consecutively south of its turn-off for Leicester, Braunston Junction. Thames Lock i
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Ridable miniature railway
A ridable miniature railway is a large scale ground-level model railway that hauls passengers using locomotives that are models of full-sized railway locomotives. Miniature railways have a rail track gauge between 5 in and 18 in, though both larger and smaller gauges are used; these large model railroads are most seen in urban parks or in commercial settings, such as amusement park rides. At gauges of 5 in and less, the track is raised above ground level. Flat cars are arranged with foot boards; the track is multi-gauged, to accommodate 5 in, 3 1⁄2 in, sometimes 2 1⁄2 in gauge locomotives. Track can be portable in gauges as large as 5 in. Portable track is used to demonstrate locomotives at temporary events such as fêtes and summer fairs. Portable track can be either ground level. In the UK miniature lines are operated as public heritage railways, though many private lines exist in the USA. In Australia, most 5 inch gauge tracks are at ground level. Australian societies are members of the Australian Association of Live Steamers, which arranges Codes of Practice for Operations and Training, for the operation of miniature railways below 8 inch gauge through their subcommittee the Australian Live Steamers Safety Committee, Boiler codes for the operation of miniature steam boilers through the Australian Miniature Boiler Safety Committee.
The major distinction between a ridable miniature railway and a minimum-gauge railway is that miniature lines use models of full-sized prototypes. There are miniature railways that run on gauges as wide as 2 ft, for example the Wicksteed Park Railway. There are ridable miniature railways running on narrow track as small as 10 1⁄4 in gauge, for example the Rudyard Lake Steam Railway. Around the world there are several ridable miniature railways open to public using narrower gauges, such as 7 1⁄4 in and 7 1⁄2 in. Minimum-gauge railways have a working function as estate railways, or industrial railways, or providers of public transport links. Backyard railroad Children's railway Train ride Broggie, Walt Disney's Railroad Story: The Small-Scale Fascination That Led to a Full-Scale Kingdom, The Donning Company Publishers, ISBN 978-1-57864-914-3 Grand Scales Quarterly the US magazine of grand scale railroading Miniature Railway World Live Steam Tracks Britains Great Little Railways City of Oxford Society of Model Engineers 7¼ Inch Gauge Society http://www.pnmec.org.nz/meanz.php the Model Engineering Association of New Zealand
