HMS Victory - a place in history

Visited the Historic Dockyard Museum recently. Many don't realise that the Victory was active at the start of the industrial revolution. Don't be fooled by the fact that it is powered by sail, it was a sophisticated piece of kit, far ahead of the Mary Rose which sank 233 years before the Victory was completed:

1759 - Keel laid down
1775 - Jane Austen born, James Watts first advanced steam engine
1778 - Victory fitted out and completed
1786 - Albion cotton mill fitted with steam engine
1792 - First home with gas lighting
1794 - Whitney patents cotton gin
1802 - Trevithick demonstrates steam locomotive. Cruickshanks trough electric battery.
1805 - Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson dies
1807 - First successful steam boat
1815 - Battle of Waterloo, defeat of Napoleon
1817 - Jane Austen dies

Waterlooville and the 1986 Domesday project

Back in 1986 the BBC created a modern Domesday project using the BBC micro computer and what was then cutting edge technology, a video disc. It was very ambitious and was ahead of its time.
The BBC have now recovered the information from the discs and placed it on the interweb.

I searched the new pages and found this page which covers Waterlooville and Havant Borough:


D-block GB-468000-108000

This page has entries for St Georges church, Waterlooville shopping precinct, Waterlooville facilities and an 'Interview with a local man', amongst other entries.

Or you can search the whole project.
Also visit the Wikipedia page for information about the technology and how data was collected.

A lack of direction across the UK

Having pushed the idea of a 'service' economy for decades, serious problems are appearing in this ideology. This new decade will see major skills shortages in the science, engineering and agriculture sectors at a time when we need to increase the number from the current base level.

In the agriculture sector many farmers are close to retirement age, many are actually of retirement age and with no one to take their place. In the energy sector, some 30% of professionals are due to retire in the next 10 years, a lack of new recruits mean that keeping the lights on will be a struggle.

What are Hampshire colleges doing?
Not a lot as it happens. If you look at the list of subjects that colleges focus on today, they are dominated by subjects like media, art, tourism, animal welfare, retail, law, accountancy and so on. South Downs College actually installed part of an aircraft fuselage so that students could practice their air hosting skills. They also built a new music school.

Meanwhile there is a huge need now for a wide range of engineering and science skills to tackle the nations looming energy and environmental crisis. Do the colleges expect Tesco shelf stacker's and a trained holiday guide to operate a nuclear reactor, or climb up a wind turbine to service it?

Where are South Downs College and Havant College going to get their electricity from to train the hair dressers and tour guides?
Where is the food going to come from to feed the media students?
Where do media students expect the electricity to come from to power their computers and cameras?

An unbalanced economy doesn't just increase the carbon footprint of the goods we use (because the manufactured goods come from countries using more fossil fuels than us), it is also going to have a long term detrimental impact on the nations (and Hampshire) ability to maintain a level independence.

The agriculture and energy sectors are not the only areas that need a massive injection of skills. The Royal Academy of Engineers have recently chipped in by pointing out a lack of skills in the building industry to create low carbon buildings. In particular they indicated that current developers were putting 'eco-bling' on current buildings, rather than implementing eco-friendly building ideas that have been known for thousands of years. The Taylor Wimpey homes at the Dukes Meadow site near Waterlooville are prime examples of eco-bling.