Vera and the forces of rock
QUESTION Did Vera Lynn appear on stage with rock band Hawkwind?
VERA Lynn did share a stage with rock ’n’ roll hellraiser Lemmy and his one-time band Hawkwind.
On August 24, 1985, the group topped the bill at the Anti-Heroin Campaign concert at the Crystal Palace Bowl, hosted by the Who’s Pete Townshend.
March Violets, Doctor and the Medics, Comsat Angels and Spear of Destiny were also on the bill.
Tickets were priced at the princely sum of £2.50 and a mystery guest, billed as ‘?? To Be Announced ??’, was to lead the group finale.
To the concert-goers’ surprise, Vera Lynn came on to lead the participants and audience in a closing sing-along of The White Cliffs Of Dover, Auld Lang Syne and We’ll Meet Again.
Hawkwind’s then guitarist Huw Lloyd-Langton played the drums.
The concert was a reunion between Hawkwind and Lemmy after he had joined Motorhead a decade earlier. The performance also featured the return of topless dancer Stacia, who had departed with Lemmy in 1975.
Dan Burt, Dorset.
QUESTION Where is Ireland’ s largest building by square feet?
THE largest building in Ireland, in terms of square feet, is the Tesco distribution centre at Donabate in north Co. Dublin, which extends to 80,194 square metres.
This single-storey building is 3km north of Swords, in Lanestown, Donabate, close to the historic Newbridge House. Tesco had the building constructed in 2007 at a cost of €70million, but as soon as it was completed, it was offloaded in a sale and leaseback deal to a property consortium assembled by KPMG.
The lease runs for 25 years and the rent increases annually in line with inflation.
Four years ago, the building was sold on again, this time to a South African-based property fund, for €129 million.
The depot in Donabate is used for non-fresh ambient food lines as well as other items sold by Tesco, such as electrical goods. Tesco has another distribution depot in Ballymun, Dublin, for frozen food lines.
At Donabate, the building is 1km long and it takes ten minutes to walk from one end to the other. It has over 100 loading bays, so there’s a constant stream of trucks delivering goods into the depot and then taking them to Tesco stores all over the country.
Tesco has a very centralised delivery system for its supermarkets and shops, although local producers can and do sign up on a local basis to deliver directly to supermarkets and shops in their own area. But if their business expands with Tesco, they will then move on to the nationwide delivery system.
The Tesco distribution store at Donabate is actually the eighth largest building in the world, it’s so big. The centre is so large that much of the business of stacking and unloading the goods stored is automated.
Staff involved in the work of stacking incoming goods and then picking orders to go out for delivery wear digital armbands that constantly monitor their performance.
Employees are given voiceactivated instructions on how to pick orders by such means as scanning barcodes; a paperless ordering system was installed five years ago.
Staff working on order picking are given set amounts of time for specific tasks, say 20 minutes to load a pallet of soft drinks. If that task is done in the allotted 20 minutes, they are given a 100% rating, but if they do it in half the allocated time, they get a 200% rating.
People who aren’t directly involved in bringing in supplies and stacking them and then picking orders for delivery to Tesco supermarkets around the country are not digitally monitored.
This distribution centre at Donabate far outpaces any other building in the country in terms of size. In the North, for instance, planning permission was given last year for the largest office building in Northern Ireland, to be built on the Dublin Road, Belfast.
It covers 23,225 square metres of space, but over 12 floors. It’s less than a third of the size of the Tesco distribution centre.
While the Tesco distribution centre at Donabate is by far the largest building in Ireland, the two tallest structures have been out of use for over a decade.
The two chimneys at the old Poolbeg generating station in Dublin are iconic sights in the city, even though they have been out of use for so long. One is 207.8metres high, while the other is 207.48 metres.
But in terms of sheer size, all on one floor level, no other building in Ireland comes close to the vast Tesco distribution centre at Donabate.
Patrick Doyle, Dublin.
QUESTION Why was Scout leader Robert Baden-Powell included in Hitler’s black book of prominent British people to be arrested after a German invasion?
THE Sonderfahndungsliste GB was a list of people considered to be capable of organising a resistance movement against Nazi occupation or of speaking out against them. There were similar lists for all the countries that Germany occupied or intended occupying.
Those on the Polish list became the first prisoners to be held in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1939. Most were dead within a year of being arrested. The majority of those on the lists were political figures, but there were also prominent members of the Jewish community, journalists, Church leaders, civil servants, trade unionists, communists and members of the establishment.
All those named were to be arrested on sight and placed in concentration camps.
The list doesn’t provide any information as to why a person’s name was on it, only what they were known for. Robert Baden-Powell’s entry simply says Grunder der Boy Scouts
Bewegung — founder of the Boy Scout movement.
Following the publication of Scouting For Boys in 1908, generations had grown up following its guidance and revering Baden-Powell as the founder and leader of the movement.
There are two reasons why his name was included on the list. As Chief Scout, he was a muchrespected figure capable of rallying Scouts and former Scouts into a resistance movement.
The Nazis also considered the Scouts to be a spy organisation. In Germany, they were seen as the main rival to the Hitler Youth and were banned by 1935.
Among other names on the list were writer Vera Brittain, authors Aldous Huxley, EM Forster, HG Wells and Ted Willis, cartoonist David Low, and actors Noel Coward and Sybil Thorndike.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton.
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