PM's & First ministers

[Tony Taylor]

Stirred a memory John. My late wife and I touched down at Bombay on route in 2004 to visit our son in Sydney. There was an announcement that we could disembark for a short while.
The majority of us stayed on board. Then the cleaners came aboard. I'll never forget the general eye watering, rank odour of BO as the scurried up and down the aircraft picking up bits of rubbish. My wife couldn't bite her tongue. She said loudly, 'OK they may not have heard of deodorant but for God's sake they must have heard of soap and water'.That was then.
By contrast, my brother is currently in Delhi having a hip transplant. Because of a FOUR YEAR, PAINFUL DELAY IN THE UK, he couldn't wait any longer and after much research he went there for the op. He couldn't praise the surgeon, the hospital and all his aftercare team highly enough. He said the hospital was like the NHS in the UK before the idiots here got rid of matrons and bought in highly paid bean counters to run our hospitals. The UK Health Minister should be forcibly taken there to find out for himself how to run a health service - because ours now is not fit for purpose.

Gino, many of them would not have had access to any of the things ou mentioned.
I first went to India in 1970, spent about 5 days in the seamans club in Bombay waiting for a ship. During that time I struck up an aquaintanceship with an old hand BI C/E. He shoed me many things that were not on the "tourist" circuit and opened my eyes to the real India.
I then spent about 2 months on the Indian coast before we got a reprieve and got orders for the Gulf to load for Sigapore, what a relief.
I never went back to India during my time at sea but went back in 2012 /13. I travelled to Delhi, then on to a place called Pata, in the middle of nowhere in Uttar Pradesh, to survey a job on a petro chem plant, then back to Delhi.

Between 1970 and 2012/13 the only changes I noted were more modern vehicles, buildings, more pollution and even more people. The levels of dire poverty and filth were just as bad, if not worse. Even the "five star" hotel I stayed in was filthy, I tried to open the net curtains to look outside and was literally choked by the clouds of dust I was covered in. Even in 1970 the seamans club was clean, even though the water was only on from 07.00 to 08.00 and 18.00 to 19.00hrs. daily.
I would expect that even today there will be people living on the streets without access to basic facilities.

[Raymond McCrohon]

Egg bacon AND Curry! You were obviously overfed in BTC. contrary to the rumours.
Radcliffes of Cardiff boy.
Slainte
R619998

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Raymond.
Sailing out of Swansea there wasn't much choice, all the nice cargo boats only came in to load, mainly tinplate or steel the rest where old rust buckets that went to Canada for logs. So it was tankers, other than the Gulf I went to as many places as the cargo boats, only problem was they didn't stay long in port. As for the food it wasn't much different to Cargo boats except for the Curry.
Cheers Des