Closure is announced of Smith’s Dock in Teeside after building over 900 vessels from 1910 onwards as part of the demise of the UK shipbuilding industry and loss of 3,500 jobs whilst nuclear power station leaks also hit the headlines and we have our normal trip to Cambridge and lunch there
A sound sleep after a late night and awoke rather late and was not dressed in time for breakfast. Dressed immediately afterwards, thought, and got down to some paperwork in my office. I got the papers together and reconciled my bank accounts, whilst I used the computer to print out the other day’s work. It took a while and used all of my blank paper in the process. I also worked out my building society cheque account balance, with Di getting more impatient by the minute. Just time to feed the doves and then out to the car and off to Cambridge. Coffee together and then I spent the morning in Heffers bookshop, whilst Di went shopping. Lunch of roast beef at the Copper Kettle, then home via St Neots, where I did a few errands.
Home with the wind high and showers fighting us and so settled back to my office work for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I also checked Daniel’s schoolwork and put the back-numbers of the Country Companion into a folder with Debbie. I went to Hinchingbrooke Hospital to discuss the results of my recent tests with Mr Higgins, the Consultant responsible for urinary tract matters, this afternoon. He told me that my recent blood, urine and IVP tests had not found anything and, whilst they could do a further bladder test, he felt that there was not much point and that I should be discharged. Good news for this green light. Poorer news on the TV as British Shipbuilders announce the loss of 3,500 jobs, as they are to close Smith’s Dock in Teesside, Ailsa Troon Yard in Strathclyde and the Wallsend Engine Works on the Tyne. The Government came in for vitriolic criticisms from management, workers and opposition politicians, due to the even-handed industrial policy for ship building, when Asian countries, such as Japan and Taiwan, subsidised their industries. Gorbachev makes his first televised statement on the Chernobyl nuclear accident. He said that 9 had died and 299 were hospitalised and called for a new international mechanism for nuclear power control. He also announced the extension of the Soviet nuclear test moratorium until August 6th, the 41st anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. A reactor at Sizewell, the nuclear power station in Suffolk, was shut down today after a defective fuel can was reported and an enquiry into a radioactive leak at Hinckley Point B power station in Somerset, blamed a faulty bolt, but many pounds of radioactive carbon dioxide were released into the air at the time. A Yugoslav court has sentenced an 86 year old Nazi war criminal to death for mass killings during the war, whilst a Croatian Interior Minister, but his blindness and old age will probably lead to clemency.