Grow The F*** Up!

 The Internet has made cowards as brave as you like.  Operating from their mother's under stairs cupboards, the keyboard warriors tackle the problems of the day and report what, in their befuddled minds, annoys them or offends them.  I'm sure that the authorities who have brought this behaviour on their own heads must be fed up with this now but NO it continues to plague us.

TV Programmes aren't all as good as they used to be I suppose but my method of complaint is to turn it off, turn the programme over or just not watch it anyway.  We see daily, enraged and offended people complaining to the BBC or OFCOM, online about something in a programme which, frankly, just using your common sense and taking away the ability for the programme to become commercially realised might be a better strategy?  Surely if the programme is made and had been broadcast and you sat there and watched it and were offended then it's to do with you surely?

I was watching a programme last night episode 2 of a war series and it was dreadful and it was offensive, unrealistic and not believable - quite how someone in war time could get from England to Italy without the benefit of EasyJet or Ryan Air in such a very quick time, establish an identity and so on is not possible.  It was therefore stretching the credibility of the characters and the plot, the main actors weren't exactly likeable (I know you don't have to be) and so 20 minutes into the second episode I turned over and will not see out the next 4 episodes.  However, why would I write to anyone about it let alone complain?  What's the point?  If I don't like something, I don't watch it, If I don't like a product, I don't buy it.  What's the point of taking to the agencies and expecting them to do about it.

Of course, here I am writing and complaining too which is a bit hypocritical I suppose.  It seems a lot of our "culture" these days is to be snitches and tell tales, grassing people up and reporting them to the authorities.  You can't really practice free speech much these days as they'll say you're not allowed to say or do this or that.  Back in the day, if you said what you were thinking and I disagreed with it, I had a choice.  I could tell you I disagreed and why and back then, you could do that and not get into a screaming row or being yelled at.  I could just let them have their say and say nothing, or I could just walk away and ignore it.

I do hate this yelling and screaming nonsense these days.  People almost burst a blood vessel getting so angry about something you might say.  But here is the thing that worries me, have we lost the ability to have an opinion and to voice it.  I do have contrary opinions to many people.  I don't believe a word that any of the MSM say.  A case in point would be the bias of the BBC news.  It's worth getting views from different organisations and contrast and compare.  The illegal invasion by economic migrants is a case in point.  The BBC had someone on from a pressure group stating that these people were coming to a safe country from wherever they were from.  They had already passed through a number of safe countries and some were coming from countries where there were no wars or conflict etc.  So to double down on this they then pulled some library shots of a child being rescued from a boat.  The one thing you don't see that often is children or women among these.

Then the bloke says that we should provide safe channels for refugees as if we don't now.  You can get here via a safe channel if you are claiming asylum but to pay to come over by boat destroying your papers on the way over isn't a safe channel is it?  That's the BBC for you.  Go and have a look at France24 or some other European News station or go and look online and find out about it.  The BBC reporting of the raid on the Gaza Hospital is diametrically different to other news outlets.

Worryingly, people are more interested in complaining about what someone is wearing rather than being fed "facts" that are dressed up propaganda.  We have long lost the ability to deliver the news and let the viewer decide what it is all about.  Now we get to hear what they "think" we should understand from the reports.  Just watch it occasionally and you can pick up the trends in the reporting, the use of NGOs and Pressure Groups disguised as unbiased factual commentators. 

Anyway, off at a tangent but everyone needs to wake up and become an adult again.  Bickering like children and pointing fingers and telling tales is not going to lead us out of this situation.  As I sad at the start, grow the f*** up.  

Internet Sloth

 I am a member of interest groups for areas that I am interested in, obviously! Such as family history, my Drone flying and so on.

So what's got my annoyance factor up is the use of these groups to ask stoooopid questions.

There's a local road group and someone will ask whether the road bridge is clear.  Well, hello, if I don't know when you posted the query and in what direction you are going in and if I haven't actually driven that way in six months how do you expect me to know?  But worse than that, you can go onto Google Maps and just see the information yourself or you can go on the roadworks app and so on.  But no, ask a group of a few thousand people when you could and should just look on line - all the information is there.

The Drone group makes me laugh as the Administrator is quite good fun.  So someone asks what sort of SD Card goes with their particular Drone model.  Admin states that the same ones advised in the operating manual!  Boom!  

This default asking other people to read the manual for you also extends to cars - my car - I know how it works as I read the driver's manual before I actually got to drive it.  It has a wealth of little gadgets that people ask what they are for and there's a full explanation in the book.

Are people actually this lazy?  By the looks of what I've read today, they surely are.   

Another Lap Of The Sun

 And we're off on another orbit of the Sun, a huge Star at the centre of our tiny solar system.  It certainly makes for an interesting study of quite how amazing this orbit of ours is.  If you haven't studied it, then I'd strongly suggest that you do as it is fascinating in many ways.

I was interested to know that we view the orbit as a circular one and it isn't really we are nearer or further to the sun depending on what time of year it is.  The inclination of our axis (which provides our seasons too) is also of added interest as is the wobble of the planet.  I liked that we see the orbit as a flat picture with planets going around the sun on a horizontal plane and yet in reality is it is more on a vertical plane.  The planets themselves influence each other and their satellites (our moon) add additional complexity.  Much as I dislike Professor Brian Cox his recent series on the planets was very good.

Earth is closest to the sun in its orbit, a point called perihelion, around January 4th of each year. At perihelion, Earth is about 147.1 million kilometers from the sun, which is 5 million kilometers closer than it is at aphelion, its furthest point from the sun.  I'd speculate that this is a good thing as we probably get milder conditions now than if we didn't even though it is our winter.

I often wonder whether anyone thinks about this because the more I listen or watch the "The world's about to burst into flames" brigade the less I think they've thought through their arguments.  The old "denier" accusation is falling a bit thin these days as that's the only counter argument and it's not a logical response to debating scientific data and questioning it.  My mother was told when she was going to marry a Catholic and was attending her lessons with the priest that she would never be a good Catholic as she asked too many questions.  Make of that what you will.  My scientific hero, Richard Feynman, stated that he would "Rather have questions that cannot be answered rather than answers that could not be questioned".

Does anyone see that?  If you cannot challenge "Da Science" you have to ask yourself and whoever tells you that you can't WHY??   Why will you not enter into scientific debate, why is your data not available and so on.  Scientists do not have a "Right to remain silent" if they want their work relied upon.  It depends on who you talk to about this subject but you can destroy the majority of the cult's mantras by just looking at available data and gathering it from various sources.   What has struck me about our politicians is how they've thrown their weight and support behind pretty ropy (let's face it) "facts" and gone all in with solutions to problems that neither exists or that exist in such minuscule ways that the best policy is to adapt rather than destroy the economy and the people in the pursuit of being able to "CONTROL the weather"  you can't do that now and if you have the utter hubris to think you can do that in the future in a chaotic system then you need sectioning fast.  

I also note that around the world our politicians manage to accumulate a lot of wealth from their salaries.  They obviously aren't investing in savings accounts as those don't pay the many thousands of percentage point returns these charlatans seem to attract.  Let's see if any get exposed in this coming year?  I like that some of the climate change ambassadors have purchased beach front residencies whilst telling us that rising ocean waters will drown us all.  It's nice of them to regularly almost daily jet off around the world and say that we cannot go on a once in a year holiday.  Seventy Thousand went to Baku for the latest p1ss up convention on climate change.  They've had close to 30 years to get an accord and in that time you can't see anything happening other than the rhetoric expanding and the demand for rich countries to pay reparations to poor countries as if that will make any difference whatsoever.  

I really hope that it is called out soon but for much of the Western world, the UK and some of Europe the damage is done.  Our rush to reduce the 1% of man-made CO2 to zero has already doubled our energy bills, forced us on journey into woefully unsupported and unplanned electric vehicle use - we neither have the energy capacity, the infrastructure or indeed the willingness to sort this out.  A case in point is an elderly gentleman bought an electric car as he thought he was doing the right thing.  He ran a lead out to the car from his house and it was highlighted as a trip hazard and so he cannot charge his car.  That's it, how does that work? It doesn't. I saw a car plugged into a house in Cambridge with exactly that sort of connection and they'd put a hazard cover and ramp over the cable  - if you'd had a wheelchair I doubt you'd have easily got over it.  Old people and people with pushchairs or prams?  Good luck with that.  

So here we go into 2025, just 5 years until net zero, only electric cars, heat pumps not gas boilers to heat our houses and petrol and diesel what?  Are they just going to switch the stuff off?  It's utter nonsense and I don't know if they are too stupid to see it or if it's Emperor's New Clothes or what is going through (if they've got one) their minds.  An absolute car crash of a policy, based on a cult for their is very little science being done and for what?  So some dimwit can turn a switch and we can have a nice sunny day tomorrow and turn a switch and it will rain for 3 hours on a certain day - maybe only at night if they can manage it?  All our electricity is going to be generated by windmills that work when they turn the wind switch on which it will be needed all the time you can't have any still days now can you.  Maybe they can make the sun shine 24x7 so that the solar panels can provide electricity.  That's how f*****g stupid all of this is.  

Instead of spending billions trying to capture carbon why not plant a few trees and have done with it.  BTW, the last thing you want is zero carbon - look it up.  

General Ignorance

I  was struck with the general level of ignorance I see and read these days.  There's plenty of comments that are Trolling but there are also some very strange people out there.  People commenting on the car crash that is the UK economy appear to be caught in some sort of time loop and think that we are back in the 70s and 80s.  Those who think that other people should pay more taxes whilst they don't have to.  Those who think that after 50 years I'm not entitled to my pension that I've paid for.  They think it is a benefit and it should be removed?  Strange.  They think that ruining children's education is OK as it makes a point about toffs being sent to private schools!  Amazing, some of my friends went with bursaries and some their parents scrimped and saved to pay for their child's education.  Why is that bad?  Having said that, reading the stupidity of the comments, we can guess that they probably played truant if indeed they were educated.

There's a parochial view of the world here and they don't appear to see how things actually are and how the world works and how in our case capitalism benefits us all.  This pathetic outlook on life is alarming and one wonders how they actually get through day to day living at all?  They don't appear to have worked out that all these thumping taxes will increase their own finances when they filter through.  Stuff costs more than the 3 or 4% inflationary figure that our state broadcaster would have us believe.  In 4 years I reckon my bills have doubled, yes doubled, go and check out what you were paying in 2019 and compare.  Who did they think was going tp pay for all the handouts and freeloaders?  They think it is business!  We already know that if you run a business you need to work out how you run it in the face of all these overarching  overburdening government regulations and taxes.  The consumer pays, the consumer always pays.  But no, these Muppets want to continue to pile regulations and taxes, rates etc and think that the business will just absorb it all.

Meanwhile, go and look at the BRICS economies and wonder to yourselves how come they can make something and ship it to me for less than half of the price I can buy it for retail?  I purchased a Magnetron for less than £12 shipped all the way from China (including shipping).  OK they didn't protect the package properly so it arrived in pieces but how can you do that and make a profit at it for £12?  We could barely ship it in the UK for that price.  So how are they doing that?  Well the great and good don't want heavy stuff in out country you know like mining or obtaining the raw materials, making things in factories and so on, really NIBBY types.  We have such high energy prices (some of the highest in the world) that we cannot actually compete that way, nor with people, again a high cost and all the regulations associated with that we cannot do it and to remain green we shift it all and now fully rely on other countries.  I was watching a programme where the costs of goods is so cheap and why it was like that.

These do-gooders have destroyed what economy we had.  We no longer have any leverage in the world and we are no longer "Great" Britain.  It's sad to see that these people seem to think there is a government money tree somewhere.  There is no government money at all, it is OUR money.  People are happy to sling mud around about Brexit, Taxes and Big State and yet they have no idea what that actually means.  Does the Public Sector actually generate income or do they spend our money?  There's no willingness on anyone's behalf to counter this death spiral of economic and societal decline either.  There appears to me to be whole areas of the country that are marginalised where people are trapped in a system that makes them poorer and is difficult to escape from.  Inflation is eroding incomes and prices are going up with little wage growth (excepting public sector and government favourites).  Fiscal drag is applied by not moving tax thresholds, employment is slowing as extra taxes are levied to employ people and many businesses will just close down operations, not hire or do something else and pass on the costs to consumers.  In the words of Monty Python "Is this anyway to run a ****** ballroom?" (or was it Derek and Clyde?). 

I've been looking for the ROI data on plastic straws.  So worrying was it to the environmentalists that it was deemed necessary to do away with them so that we could save the planet.  I'd guess that it would probably save the planet from warming by 0.00000000000000000000000001 degree but no on can tell me.  The increased costs and you now need to often get a second straw as the paper ones (wrapped in plastic and coated in plastic) go soggy very quickly thereby doubling the number of straws required.

Anyway, this rant is really aimed at those who wave their arms around, want to be controlled by the government blob, being told what to do and when they can do it etc.  They really need to do some research before opening their gobs.  Every time they do they show that they are willing to sacrifice their fellow citizens for their own end.  Of course, they unwittingly also end up going down the same plug hole they've created for everyone else.