David P. Gregg

This is an ancient mystery story. The Wirral peninsula in the county of Cheshire, just north of ancient Chester, is well known for its Viking and Roman history but artifacts going back to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, such as ritual stone axes and flint arrow heads are also known.Yet no other signs of these early occupants have been recognised...until now.Professor Gregg following clues found by students of old maps, has discovered that at three sites these people designed and constructed great circles and arrays of standing stones using geometrical rules familiar from later European medieval cathedrals.At Saxon Overchurch the ancient chapel stands on a raised platform of earlier date.The platform in turn is surrounded by a great circle, 8 stones of which still survived in the 19th century. That circle is over 1100 ft across and hosted an inscribed hexagon.The professor shows that the probability of chance creating this geometry is minute.Here is the mystery: the position and dimensions of the Saxon and later Norman and medieval church are simply related to the design of the platform and to the great stone circle.There appears to be continuity of design from the Neolithic to the medieval period.The professor explains why this is not so unexpected. Even more remarkable a little to the south at Arrowe Park there once stood two larger concentric circles involving a dozen stones.The inner circle which also hosted a hexagon, was over 2000 ft across.As at Overchurch the proportions of the circles show familiar patterns involving prime roots, phi and pi.Again the professor shows that a chance explanation is out of the question. The geometry is so striking that he investigates the possibility of a 19th century hoax by a Druid obsessed antiquarian landowner.He shows that a hoax is very unlikely. These results are so surprising the skeptical reader may require further evidence.To provide it the professor analyses a third Wirral site. Near the ancient village of Bidston he describes a regular, organised array of 42 stones over 1250 ft long by 800 ft wide.The array has interesting and familiar geometry and as at Overchurch and Arrowe Park that geometry leads to alignments involving 3 or more stones which point to rising and setting points of the Sun and Moon on the local horizon. Major events such as midsummer sunrise are marked by several alignments.Also notable are markers for the pagan cross quarter day festivals of Imbolc, Beltain, Lughnasadh and Samhain which were adopted by the Christian church.It is this continuity of calendrical events from pagan through to Christian times which explains the strange design links at Overchurch spanning the millennia.Professor Gregg reminds us that Pope Gregory the Great himself instructed St. Augustine to adopt the temples of the heathens and rededicate them to Christ and the saints. Overchurch may be a classic example of the results of that policy in Britain. The three ancient sites described in this short book, if the analyses here are confirmed by further field work and research, may be as important as Stonehenge and Avebury. The Arrowe Park circles, for example, far exceed Avebury and all other known stone circles in diameter.The sites are currently unprotected and have already suffered from housing and road developments.It is time to take action to save what may remain.

Some places are just not safe.The multiverse is a ramshackle creation at best and sometimes the fabric of reality is worn thin.The ancient Green Man Inn in England's rural Cheshire is such a place. Long before the Vikings came here there were others who imbued the land with energies some would call occult.Now the Old Powers are waking again and all hell is let loose.The Society for Unexplained Phenomena finds itself very much in demand as a horde of strange visitors seem compelled to tell their even stranger stories. Mad scientists;time travelling alien art collectors;a man with the Devil's luck;pilgrim ghosts;the real origins of Atlantis and Olympus;some lessons on raising hell;how Aborigines discovered America;why William Turner RA went mad on the Wirral;how creation really happened-maybe;Professor Lennox learns his purpose in time;the Wicca Woman saves the day;an immortal dog lover gets stoned;computing the second coming of Christ;who or what will inherit the Earth?;morality and the death of Alan Turing;a new universal religion and how to live forever;a real UFO experience;a true guardian of time-and the vulnerable;conversations with sentient lifts and why to never cross Senior Citizens.As usual we have several guest appearances including Reg...Death's taxi driver. These are 20 short stories of weird science and the supernatural in the tradition of Arthur C Clarke with a little Terry Pratchett thrown in.

The Wirral peninsula in Cheshire, England is well known for its Roman and Viking past.Recently remains have been found from the Mesolithic period, nearly ten thousand years ago.In between there is little known except the stone carvings of Bidston Hill.Using new evidence Professor Gregg shows the probable presence of a huge stone circle surrounding the Saxon church site at Overchurch, Upton.It may be that Overchurch is a corruption of 'Ofer's Ring'.This circle is marked by several stones recorded on 19th century OS maps and more recent limited geophysical surveys.Even stranger there are obvious geometrical links between the circle and the Saxon-Norman church site which sits with its graveyard on a large raised platform.Early Christian churches were often sited on much earlier pagan sites and the professor demonstrates how the church position and scale are intimately defined by the platform geometry.Even more surprising the construction lines defining the platform design point to the rising and setting points of the Sun on the horizon at the solstices, equinoxes and pagan cross-quarter day festivals such as May Day and Halloween. The same markers survive in the positions of the great circle stones.The circle is 1176ft in diameter or 173 megalithic rods.This would make it 4X the size of Stonehenge and the largest stone circle in Britain.Over half the circle is now covered by roads and houses but half is still accessible.A full geophysical survey of the circle's path should be undertaken before all of this important listed site is lost.Gravestones from the abandoned Overchurch are still being taken for local garden rockeries. Remarkably Overchurch is not alone. A mile to the south Professor Gregg analyses a set of three giant circles at Arrowe Park: the largest is over 4000 ft across.As before the geometry is hexagon based and the 13 stones involved mark out several accurate lines to sun and moon events on the horizon.We also find the same cannon of proportions based on geometry familiar in English medieval cathedrals: the silver and golden sections and simple functions of pi and phi.The patterns are so clear that the author considered a Victorian hoax by an antiquarian land owner with knowledge of Euclid However this would be a century before the first pioneers of calendrical landscape astronomy laid down the necessary mathematics. On balance these Wirral anomalies are probably ancient and indeed Neolithic in date.The geometry in these circles is familiar from Stonehenge and Avebury but the Arrowe big circle is 4X the diameter of the Avebury ring...if real it would be the largest geometrical figure on the planet...so f

This book records the latest chapter in the long history of state denigration of the 'undeserving poor' in the British underclass.In 2011, following the police killing of a black Londoner with alleged gang associations, riots broke out in several cities.The common threads in the rioters were poverty and minority ethnic protests against police prejudice.The government claimed that the real issue was gangs although only 13% of rioters had gang links.They further claimed that gangs arose because of bad parenting.On this basis they launched the Troubled Families Programme which would reprocess 120,000 of these families and turn them into model citizens.Prime Minister David Cameron made these claims in the media: 'These families are the source of a large proportion of the problems in society.Drug addiction.Alcohol abuse.Crime.A cult of irresponsibility that cascades through the generations.' In fact 97% of the families had never received drug treatment;88% were not alcohol dependent;90% were not involved in crime;94% had no gang links.However the families were very poor, socially inadequate and had high levels of illness.75% had a member with a limiting, long standing illness or disability; 52% had at least one child with a statement of special educational needs or other special needs. Unemployment was at 74% mainly because of health issues.45% of adults had a mental health problem. These were families in trouble; not families causing trouble.Their real 'crime' was that they cost the state too much money.The official story was that the TF Programme would save tax payers 9 billion per annum by 'turning around' these families using 'assertive intervention' and 'tough sanctions'.40% of the families were indeed sanctioned.Very few of the families received medical treatment for their many health problems.By 2015 after the 3 year programme, it was claimed that 99% of the families had been successfully re-programmed and that 1.2 billion per annum had been saved. In 2016 the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee forced the release of the National Evaluation Study of the TFP which had been suppressed for over a year.It showed that instead of a 99% 'turn around' the TFP had made zero impact on family crime, antisocial behaviour, school problems, health, well being, employment, family stability or benefit claiming.A study of local authority results showed a net saving of 5% of the total family cost BUT this could not be attributed to the TFP itself. The real 'cost saving' was probably zero.So we have a 99% family 'turn around' but at least 95% of family cost remains How is this possible?The author shows how the local authorities, encouraged by the UK department for communities and local government, changed success criteria and manipulated data to get the result the government wanted. The TFP cost the British tax payer 448 million from 2012 to 2015. The money vanished into cash strapped local authorities.The TFP achieved nothing except the harassment of vulnerable families who needed but did not get support for chronic health problems.Despite criticism of the TFP the PAC approved its continuation at a further cost of over 900 million to 2020. It was too embarrassing to cancel it and admit a major policy failure which had cross-party support. The riots and the TFP story were also used to justify a general attack on UK welfare benefits with major cuts and a blitz of sanctions.The result has been an explosion in Food Banks and the suicides of desperate people denied benefits, perhaps 840 each year.The author notes that the Nazis killed their own disabled 'useless mouths' through the 1930s and 1940s, perhaps 250,000 in all, simply because of their high cost to the state.They did not find it necessary to denigrate and blame their 'unfortunates'.In Britain today, we do.

The multiverse is poorly put together and in places reality is worn thin.The Green Man Pub on the Wirral peninsula is such a place and gas fracking only makes things worse.The Old Gods are stirring beneath the Dragon Paths and the Society for Unexplained Phenomena find themselves under siege from strange visitors compelled to tell their stories: the Wicca Woman, Roger Bacon and a very dangerous horn, geomancy, aliens of a sort, time travellers up to no good, the end of the world...maybe, a bar room prophetess creating havoc, climate change deniers, Scouse zombies, an alternative history of the world, the wandering Jew, a disabled man with a very special talent, mad professors selling a new religion, Adolf Hitler's Wirral offspring, the ultimate cure for hangovers ...and oh yes...Reg, Death's Taxi Driver. These are science fiction & supernatural short stories in the tradition of Arthur C Clarke's 'Tales From the White Hart' and the ghost stories of M R James ...with a little Terry Pratchett