Can anyone tell me why it's never done?

Back in 2008, when we had the previous depression, our government wanted to have financial stimulus.  The idea being that if you GAVE people money, they would spend it, so there would be a stream of money going through a multitude of businesses.  This would make the businesses more viable, and unemployment would drop.

Unfortunately, people didn't spend it.  Just the opposite, in fact.  They saved it for a rainy day.  After all, they, too might lose their jobs.  Or being a nation of immigrants, you sent this windfall back to your family overseas.  Either way, the money didn't pass through our economy, and the unemployment and bankruptcies continued.

And guess what?  The 2020 stimulus package is doing exactly the same thing, and people are going to save their windfalls.

So here's an idea that I think is a good one, but I've never even seen discussed.

Instead of giving Australian people Australian dollars, give them their stimulus in special Aussie dollars.  They would have the same value as a regular Aussie dollar, but they could only be spent in Australian businesses.  They would be useless overseas.  Furthermore, they would be dated, actually on the note, we'll say, three months after issue, when they would become valueless.  If you wanted to use them, you'd only have three months to spend them in Aussie businesses.

They would be cash only, so that if you banked online you would lose the cash when you tried to redeem it.  You would be forced to spend the cash, and the cash flow would help the economy.

I don't see why this woulld not work, or why it isn't done.  Can anyone tell me where the fflaws are . . . or whether I have had a truly brilliant idea? 😀😀😀 

The Iron Bridge over the Swilgate

[Excerpt from “Green and Pleasant” Sidebotham 2018]

The third bridge is the “Iron Bridge” over the Swilgate.  It never appears to have been given any other name, and its history is obscure. It must always have been a foot bridge, because of the comparative narrowness of the bridge, and it may be “about 1850”, as suggested by Verey.   (Buildings of England Gloucestershire: The Vale and Forest of Dean) ed. Verey) in the Pevsner series.

It depends on what you consider is “about”! 

1 Orientation If the bridge were to be routed from the town, via an alley to Perry Hill, there would be no need to site the bridge at an angle.  There are several sites where the bridge could be positioned north-south rather than north east-south west which is its current orientation.  This suggests a path straight from the end of Orchard Court or one of the alleys, to Lower Lode Lane, across what is now the cricket field, to the junction of the old main road to Gloucester, and also the Gupshill Road, the route to the relatively new town of Cheltenham via Tredington or Combe Hill.   Why was it built?  Now it serves as a way of reaching a Housing Development (Priors Park, 1946), but in 1850 there were no houses there, and so it is more likely to be heading towards Lower Lode.

2 Method of Construction Secondly, its construction is primitive.  It is almost as though the builders weren’t aware of the properties of iron and built it like a stone or brick bridge. (The very first Iron Bridge, built by Abram Darby in Coalbrookdale, which was opened in 1781, was constructed using methods used in wooden bridges). 

3  Primitive Design  Thirdly, it consists of two very short primitive spans and it is reminiscent of any clapper bridge found in the West Country, where there are short spans because of the lack of strength of the stone walkways.  Clapper bridges are ancient, and like this iron bridge, the spans are not archlike.


4 Elliptical Arches in Abutments The fourth item of interest are the abutments with their elliptical brick arches.  They are brick and not iron, and they are elliptical and not circular.  I.K. Brunel built a large elliptical arch in brick over the Thames at Maidenhead in the mid-1830s.  He was probably familiar with small elliptical arches like these, where there was a small load, because although there would be a slight increase in sideways thrust compared with a semi-circular arch, it would not be significant, and the arch would have fewer bricks in it.  The central pier with its cutwater probably causes more sideways thrust on the bridge through water resistance from debris, than it would receive from water currents. 

5 Fixing of Railings/Parapets
Also, the iron parapets/railings are joined to the decks by reinforcing scrollwork in common use from about 1780 to 1810, as railings and balconies in the new town of Cheltenham.  The ends of the hand rails have been shaped. 
6  Previous Comments
This might suggest the work of a skilled blacksmith at the end of the reign of King George III, maybe working to crude drawings not prepared by an engineer.  It is as though the person responsible for this structure had never seen an iron arched bridge, which would mean that its date of construction would predate that of the Quay Bridge by several years.
The bridge walkway is made of four sections.  Only the inner two are made of wrought iron plate.  The outer two sections taper inwards to the narrower iron sections, as though the designer were a little suspicious about the new material., or else there wasn’t much of the “new” material available
And finally, why is it such a substantial structure, when a simpler form would have sufficed?  Why is it not made from wood or stone unless it were important?  Did the Iron Bridge have an importance which has been lost in the last two centuries?

My opinion maybe incorrect, but speaking as a Chartered Materials Engineer, I would estimate the date of the bridge to be not Verey’s “about 1850” (however he came to that year), but about 1800 to 1810, at the latest, which, if accurate, would make it a very early iron bridge indeed, and almost half a generation older than the Quay Bridge and the Mythe
Bridge of the 1820s.   My deductions are necessarily subject to confirmation by someone on the spot, because I am hypothesising using photographs only

7 Dating of Bridge Since I wrote the above, I have come across a map of 1811 in the British Library, and the bridge is marked on it.  This makes the Swilgate Iron Bridge Tewkesbury’s oldest iron bridge by at least eleven years and it is well into its third century! 

8 Reason for just calling it the Iron Bridge Might the simple fact that it was, and always has been called just “The Iron Bridge” suggests that it was the iron that somehow made it different from all other bridges in the area.  That it was the very first bridge made of iron anywhere in the vicinity.  There are comparatively few river crossings in North Gloucestershire.  There were no railways at that time.  Canals had brick bridges so might it be the oldest iron bridge in the Three Counties?     Might it be dated back to the end of the Eighteenth Century?

Comments would be welcome please so that they may be incorporated into my booklet “Green and Pleasant” soon to be available in .pdf form free of charge (voluntary donation to THS) from sidebothamjohnATgmail.com (change AT for @)

POSTSCRIPT

As Kevin Cromwell has stated elsewhere, the Iron Bridge is a listed structure.  However, listed structures have been known to be accidentally damaged and/or destroyed.  I do not know how many times this bridge has been repaired/refurbished, and having seen it again since I wrote the above, it might just possibly be of a slightly later date than I first thought.  I still think it is earlier than 1850, but probably later than my first estimate of 1810 (the bridge on the 1811 map might have been wooden, for instance).  But it IS early, and probably much the same age as the Quay Bridge (1822).  Tewkesbury is certainly lucky to have it, but two things are important:

1)      The bridge must be refurbished/rebuilt/repaired with PROFESSIONAL archaeological advice

2)      The bridge should be signposted down one or more of the alleys from Barton Street, and "Out of the Hat" given information for tourists.



ALSO  There is the remains of a hinge at the end of the bridge.  What was it for, and why is it there?

corona

Different Pestilences, how they progressed, and evidence of how they died out

1  The Black Death 1300s in Europe

This pestilence came to Western Europe and was particularly virulent.  If you look carefully at the stonework in the Nave of Tewkesbury Abbey, it gradually deteriorates as you go towards the back of the church.  The reason is that the good (and some of the bad) masons were dead.  The doctors were dead, the farmers were dead.  There was no treatment and therefore the death rate was huge, and the curve didn’t flatten out until the susceptible people were dead and buried.  Then the plague disappeared because there were no susceptible people left.  The population were not at all mobile.

2  The Plague of 1665

 Generally the bubonic plague that devastated London in 1665 had a very similarly shaped mortality graph to the Black Death.  Lots of Deaths early on, and when they were all dead, the resistant people survived and the number of dead decreased rapidly.  The final disinfectant in London was the Great Fire of 1666 which burnt down about one third of the City.  Again, the population was not very mobile. The other interesting episode in that plague happened in a village called Eyam in Derbyshire.  A contaminated bolt of cloth from London arrived for the tailor in the village and he got the plague.  The Vicar, the Rev. William Mompesson was very highly regarded by his parishioners and he told them to stay in the village for as long as it took. Neighbouring villagers brought food and left it at the village boundary.  Eyam paid for it with money that was left in a container soaked in vinegar.  This went on for several weeks.  Almost half of the villagers died, but nobody ran away.  Mompesson’s wife died. Whole families were lost.  But two interesting things came from this: The undertaker survived, and no plague broke out at all in neighbouring villages. The undertaker must have been immune, and thanks to the inspiration and trust felt by the villagers for Mompesson, everyone stayed in the village.  Isolation works.

3  The Spanish Flu of 1918 

This was the first recorded pandemic, because by 1918, people were mobile, and many were under orders.  There were no effective drugs, death was commonplace, (although war injuries and TB were more common and more expected.  Huge numbers died because most people were under orders, there was therefore no isolation.  Conditions were appalling - e.g. trench warfare, and not surprisingly anxiety was high.  There was a lot of mobility which spread the disease and made it worse because it lasted longer and affected people over a larger area. These three pestilences had tall but narrow graphs.  The numbers dead/day shot up until the affected patients were mainly dead, and then the graph dived as the fewer and fewer remaining victims died. The graphs, (because they are straight up and straight down) record fairly few deaths, but as they all happen over a short time, they far exceed the level of medical intervention available.

4  The current Corona Virus 2019/20 

There are certain actions which look as though they will be necessary in overcoming this particularly insidious pandemic.  It is particularly serious because it is impacting a mobile peacetime society with little or no personal knowledge of extremely high levels of disease, high unemployment, or anything other than the freedom of peacetime and relative plenty.  We need to take our actions seriously, this is not a game. This is not just a struggle against a disease. It is a WAR. Also, the symptoms of this virus are not as dramatically distinctive as earlier plagues, and the disease is taking place in times when we: go to supermarkets to buy our food, we don’t grow it; we live in a “replace not repair” community, and we take personal transport for granted and have jobs many kilometres from where we live.  Very few people walk from their home to their place of work. We are also used to a great amount of personal freedom.

What we must do medically, as opposed to economically. 

We need to know how many cases there are of corona virus We must test as many people as possible to find out. We need to plot this information to establish the shape of the graph.  “Flattening the line” The least lethal and quickest way to deal with this pandemic is to allow it to kill off all people who are susceptible to it.  Unfortunately this would scar our society as we know it, and completely overwhelm our medical facilities.

If we try to “flatten the line”, by using certain draconian precautions, the graph may get flattened, but in doing so, it will take longer to revert back to zero, and therefore, ironically, more people will be killed than if nothing were done.

Consequences of flattening the line Many businesses will close.  Many people will suddenly find themselves out of their jobs.  Most of us have lost our basic freedoms.  Many of us become perturbed or frightened by our new circumstances.  It is important that to keep money flowing, people need to earn a living wage. This is where we get contentious. 

We are at war with an enemy which we cannot see, and which does not share any of our objectives, other than to reproduce as much as its “food chain” will allow.

Because we are “at war”.  we need to act that way.  Miltary hospitals should become overflow hospitals, preferably away from hospitals where corona virus is.  The armed forces have much they can do.  Where, for instance, are our two new disaster relief ships, HMAS Canberra and HMAS Adelaide? 8000 people are being stood down from one airline alone.  Could some of those personnel e.g. cleaners, have minimum retraining and clean hospitals?  This keeps an income in the family and money flowing which can be spent in businesses that will otherwise close.  On a large scale it would help to steady the stockmarket where “ordinary Mums and Dads”, and “extraordinary Grannies and Granddads” have their super in the form of shares.

PROGNOSIS

At the moment, we have severe restrictions on what we can and can not do.  These will, in time, let’s say three months, give or take, reduce the number of obvious corona virus patients almost to zero.  That would be the end of June. However . . . At a given point, restrictions will be eased, perhaps even lifted.  The coronavirus will come back, because it was never totally eliminated.  The line will go up again, not as high, and then decrease.  As restrictions are eased and tightened and eased again, there will be a “ripple effect” of maybe five cycles.  This would mean that normal life (as we knew it a few short weeks ago) will return in about eighteen months, which will be September 2021.

And I already have an engagement in October 2021!