Morris Minor Owners Club

Yes, our old friend the BBC......not flawless, thankfully.

I've seen a 'trailer' for a programme about the fall of the Berlin wall a few times now........

The reporter says:

".....and they're all rushing through the open gates, just in case it's only a dream.....".

Well, if it were only a dream, they'd all have awoken still on the wrong side of the closed gates, so there would have been no point in their rushing through them, would there?

Nit-pick!

That's my advice!

keep taking the tablets Mick

Funnily enought I was in Bernauer Strasse yesterday. There's some really good stuff on the wall on youtube E.g.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwQsTzGkbiY

All round the Brandenburg gate was fenced up between E. and W. on Friday so Bono could celebrate the 20th anniversary of his jumping on the bandwagon by singing some songs and treating the Berliners to his usual sanctimonius prattle.

Anyway, just so that it's not a complete rant and to get on to something vaguely car related, I used to not think much of Trabants but was watching some interviews with the designers. It's incredible what they achieved with so little to work with and so much resistance from above.

Because of a shortgage of steel they had to find an alternative material that was cheap and readily available. They even tried to develop a type of cardboard as a panel before hitting on a mixture of a resin byproduct from the coal industry and cotton from the USSR. Not just any old cotton mind, but a type that wouldn't take dye so was virtually a waste byproduct and so very cheap. From this they made the body panels and named them Duraplast. Bit like fibreglass but easier to mass produce.