The Scottish Distillers Macallan, thought by many to be makers of the finest single malt Scottish Whisky in Scotland if not the World. The distillery at Craigellachie, Moray, North-East Scotland is owned by a group known as Edrington, who purchased the distilery from Highland Distillers in 1999.
Macallan's are noted in particular for a barrel of single malt whisky from as long ago as 1926 which then spent a mere 60 years maturing in a former sherry cask, and then bottled in a limited number in 1986. Said to be the finest whisky ever matured.
Two Artists of note, Peter Blake, a pop artist, known for various album covers and the Italian pop artist Valerio Adami, were brought in to design twelve labels each for the whisky bottles. One bottle of the Adami design, sold for a then world record of £848,000k in Edingburgh, in October now known as The Holy Grail of Scotch Whisky. This as now been surpassed with the new landmark price of £1.1 million for the above bottle.
A further single bottle baring a design by the Irish artist Michael Dillon a noted mural painter, being of the Easter Elchies estate at Craigellachie, was sold by Christie's in London at a price of £1 million which in turn equates to around £43,000k per measure. it's debatable what price others of the 40 bottle batch will bring, should they ever come up for sale.
A slight disagreement has broken out between members of one of Rome's leading families the Torlonias. over a collection of certain pieces of antique and historical sculpture. In actual fact, this relates to the largest privately owned collection of ancient antiquities, including over 600 pieces of sculpture, in the world, said to have an estimated value in the region of £1.6 Bllion.
The collection of artifacts from the ancient world is kept in various palaces, including the Villa Albani (above) which lies within the city of Rome. The collection was seized and impounded by court order and will be the subject of an inventory. This action came about after the challenge of one Carlo Torlonia, a Prince, who is said to believe his other family members were trying to break up the collection and sell them off. In recent years various attempts by the government to buy the collection have come to nothing.
The family came from France in the 18th century, they then worked in various money markets including money lending and banking, then eventually earned a title through the Vatican, after looking after their finances, The family then built up their collections from various sources, including, buying up private collections and even excavating certain items, from their own extensive land holdings.
During the period of the 1920s Villa Torlionias was leased to a certain Benito Mussolini, whom. among other things, added an air raid shelter to the extensive cellars.
Honister is to the South-West of Keswick and a notable pass in the area in the Lakeland Fells. Upon a worldwide scale, Fells, would probably rate as something similar to foothills. The image above shows part of the old quarry workings and the walkway is part of the Via Ferrata already in existence at the activity centre.
In a recent application to the Lake District National Park Authority LDNPA the company running the former Honister Slate Mine has now been granted planning permission for a Zip Wire. The decision comes after a protracted struggle with various objectors, the former applications being refused in 2011 and 2012
Certain interested groups, objecting to the proposal, were pinning their hopes upon public support and the recent grant of World Heritage Status to the Lake District National Park in a Cultural Landscape Category and supposedly quiet enjoyment and planning officers had previously recommended refusal of the application due to impact upon the landscape. However the LDNPA's planning authority deemed the site to be already developed as an industrial site and could not be considered to be a "tranquil" area.
The original plan was put forward by the late Mark Weir, owner of the Honister Quarry Operations and the plan has finally been brought to fruition by his widow Jan Wilkinson.
A recent crisis in The Royal Navy, brought about by a lack of personnel among other events, is having a marked affect upon the number of days ships of the Type 23 flotilla is able to spend on active duty at sea.
There are thirteen frigates in the class known as "The Duke Class" as all the ships are named after British Dukes. And of the thirteen, four, Richmond, Portland, Lancaster and Iron Duke, have, up until the end of September so far this year, remained in port.
The ships, first commissioned in 1989 with an intended lifespan of 18 years, which is currently extended, though they will soon be replaced by the new Type 26 ships (see previous article).
With the home ports of Portsmouth and Devonport, the ship's main function is anti-submarine warfare. Although with a recent host of cut-backs throughout the services, the Type 23 is being called upon to cover extra duties, in turn needing increased periods of servicing and days in port.
This is the moment the first British Jet the F35 Lightening Stealth Jet, touches down on the flight deck of the Royal Navy's Aircraft Carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, on Tuesday the 25th of September. The Aircraft Carrier was originally planned to carry a compliment of 36 of the F35's now reduced to 24. Yet still a formidable force, offering a capability matched by very few other nations. To support British and Allied naval operations across the globe.
An interesting and no doubt important 2000 year-old Roman Fountain Garden Ornament, found in Colchester back in 1998 now thought to be of immeasurable value. Has been "thrown-out" by the local council, due to the fact it was said to be "too big to store."
Reportedly the item was damaged in excavation and through exposure to the British weather and may have been too expensive to restore. Colchester council, have stated a balance must be struck with the level of public funding and storage space available, for such items and occasionally difficult decisions must be made.
On the day of the London flypast 9 July 2018 I was having a flypast of my own, to be honest a fairly regular occurrence, as I live in the Lake District, a low-flying training run for the RAF. I've long given up worrying about a Hercules Transport colliding with my Gable End! Don't know if they fly the F-35 through here, I keep hearing a screech of engines in the sky and by the time I look up the planes are gone. On that particular day I was surprised to see one of these, can't say I'd seen such a craft before,
In the London Flypast, they were using only and all aircraft currently in service with the RAF and not the one above, so could only assume the aircraft I saw was the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey or some variant. Which has the traditional or vertical take-off capabilities and may well have been doing some training for President Trump's visit to the UK two days later on 11 July.
The said aircraft could possibly have been a CV-22 as I noted the propellers were in the "normal" horizontal flight position. Something which is favoured by the USAF with extra fuel tanks for increased range missions and special operations.
This is the Type 26 Frigate, which will be the new generation of fighting ships entering service with the Royal Austrailian Navy. The order is for nine ships, which will be built in Australia, but using a design engineered by BAE Systems, ahead of other potential European designs.
The new ships will give the Australian Government a cutting-edge force to act as deterrent and security of her coastline and are seen as a suitable replacement for the "Anzac" group of frigates.
The ships will be built at the Government's yard in Adelaide by ASC shipbuilding and is expected to create around 4000 jobs in Australia. Although there shouldn't be many extra jobs in the UK there will be a large increase in exports and military equipment supply. And also scope for future orders with other nations.
The military capabilities of the Type 26 have already been discussed in a previous article, but the ships are designed for anti-submarine and air-defence activity.
The Royal Navy currently has eight of the Frigates on order, being built on the Clyde and are expected to begin entering service sometime in the 2020's.
There have been many surprises in recent months from the industrial titan Elon Musk and his Tesla Motor Group, not least of all blasting a car into space via his SpaceX Rockets.
Presently, Tesla Cars are rushing to get their Freemont, California car plant up and running and in full production. And with time fast running out, Tesla hopes to be producing 5000 cars, by the end of June 2018. A radical step has been taken to speed up the works in the form of a 1000ft hanger like structure, similar to a tent, being raised within the grounds of the car plant. Built using available on-site materials and erected in less than two weeks, "the tent" is expected to become a finishing point for the assembled vehicles.
Tesla's Model 3 an electric car, aimed at the mass consumer market, should cost around £26k and there are already future orders on the books for over a half-million units. The projected figure of 5k cars per week is hoped to turn the company profitable after a series of setbacks and delays.
Although there is a certain level of scepticism from analysts and numerous factions of the financial world. Although others see this as an ingenuous attempt to side-step an otherwise expensive and time consuming construction of a more traditional assembly line.
August 10 Update
Despite improving revenues Tesla is said to be slipping to even bigger losses, although sales remain ahead of forecasts of £3bn for the second quarter of it's financial year. Now stringent efforts are being made to ramp up production of the Model 3 to 6k units per week by the end of August. The eventual desired figure will be 10,000, units per week and as soon as this is viable.
These are difficult times for the manufacturer, with losses reaching £547m The efforts to increase production are causing Tesla to spend billions of extra dollars, increasing long term debt to as much as £8.2bn.
Had to spend a little time working upon this Banner, not just a case of doing the work myself but I'm trying to build a "team" of people who may help me in the future. Which means encouraging and using a certain young woman whom is working upon a degree in photography, a very useful person as I'm hardly a photographic genius, even in the digital age.
The subject is very important as well, the Langdale Pikes, on the left, a part of my family grew up in the shadow of these majestic fells. If you live in the Lakes, you may as well extol the virtues of the area. In fact, just turn up at Waterhead, any time of the year and there's always a number of people with varying camera skills, taking shots of more or less the same image. So to get something a bit different and more or less unique, thanks to the cloud, is something of an achievement.
And the book cover, well I had to do that myself, using the Amazon Book Cover Designer and certainly not easy, but until I can organize something more interesting, the image will do the job. Really I could do with some help from a friend and not someone wanting to make buck! You're always thinking to yourself one day you'll get some book deal, and all these problems will be sorted.
With something of an history and the rise of the Japanese Imperial Navy, 1867 - 1947 built along the lines of Britain's Royal Navy. The Japanese fleet scored remarkable victories over her enemies in the Sino - Japanese War of 1894 - 95 and the Russo - Japanese war of 1904 - 05. Followed by the complete destruction of her maritime fleet against the allies in the Second World War.
Her new fleet of warships is built under the rules of the Japanese Self - Defence Force which allows no operations of a offensive nature, by constitution and public opinion. Still her ships can make up a sizable force which would hold some force if ever called into action.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly there are as many as seventeen attack and patrol submarines and more to be added, four large helicopter support ships, eight guided missile destroyers as many as eighteen other destroyers and twelve frigates, with perhaps another sixty - plus support ships. As well as these a number of new and modern fighting ships planned and in production.
Japan has recently stepped up production of Military Naval vessels to bolster her East Chinese Fleet, springing from one 5000 Ton Class Destroyers a year, to two 3000 ton Class ships per year. Aiming for an eventual compliment of eight of the new ships.
Recently, or more often than we are told, the UK had to "scramble" jet fighters to "see off" Russian long range military aircraft, from entering home airspace. We are told this is "aggression" and Russia is keen to "extend her influence!"
But in future, when such events occur again, why not invite them to land at a designated airbase and even offer them a free re-fuel? After all we're not at war, in fact we've probably got a lot in common and besides there are already quite a few Russian citizens living in the UK.
Princess Charlotte, the two yer old daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge has this week, attended her first day at the nearby Wilcock's Nursery School in London. The above photograph was taken by her mother on the steps of Kensington Palace before Charlotte, was taken to Wilcock's to begin her first day at the highly rated school.
HMS Ocean, Flagship, pride of the fleet, etc. Is very likely to be sold in a deal with Brazil, for an estimated £84million. Though it seems people in some quarters are unhappy with the decision to sell so soon (four years) after a major overhaul which cost an estimated £65million. The Royal Navy's current Flagship, will be decommissioned later this year and the money to be used to finance other defence projects.
The ship, one of three, built in 1995 as Helicopter Support Ships, though later adapted to carry the Harrier Jump Jet, took part in the Iraq War of 2003 and the Libyan campaign of 2013. It is argued the sale of the ship will greatly reduce the navy's capability of making any form of amphibious assault, should the need ever arise. At the same time all Britain's armed forces are suffering from an extreme case of under funding and the reduction of equipment and re-employment of manpower must be taken into consideration as part of the future military focus.
Also there is a certain need to take the age of the vessel into consideration and her admirable service record, also our good relations with Brazil as a future potential Allie. Also Britain will soon bolster her commitments with the arrival of the Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers and the new planned frigates.
