I Wonder If They Know What They Do?

 Often you'll see me moving my head from side to side in disbelief at the things I see or hear that happen in our country and indeed abroad.  The latest in a line of ridiculous things include people being offended by something they saw and then making a formal complaint about it.  I just shake my head and get on and remember not to engage with whoever it was not because I'm offended because I rarely get offended but because the idiot posting or saying is obviously mentally deranged LOL.

Really though, have you heard these clowns?  I was watching delegates from COP29 being interviewed and after 29 years of this, they still come out with utter nonsense and unrealistic things.  This young lady suggested that the answer was to divert all defence spending and invest in climate change mitigation.  When asked what exactly that would take the form of, the usual spouting of batteries and windmills, solar panels etc were spouted as the saviours of the world.  When questioned further, she really struggled to explain how these were actually going to change the climate (what's the link) and what it would achieve?  Lower temperatures, less hurricanes etc.  This is where it all starts to collapse and she wasn't the only one.  They've had close to thirty years to come up with something that doesn't involve bankrupting the world to fix a problem that is easier to mitigate than try and control.  Fifty Thousand of them at the conference (haven't they heard of Zoom?) and you could see that many were head in the clouds fantasists.

Then we have our government and their disjointed and not properly joined up budget.  Farmers are going on strike next week and the PM yesterday had an opportunity to meet some of them but no, he's getting heckled everywhere he goes as his ideology and not his common sense or representation of the people are destroying things right in front of us but he cannot see it and neither can his cabinet colleagues (or maybe they can).  All we see is incompetence, form over function, complete lack of brain power and disconnection from the very people they are meant to represent.

Then there's the potential that one of the senior government ministers may not have been straightforward about the jobs they had and may not be what they said they were.  Interestingly a lot of people have been calling this out for a long time and there's only so much deniability you can do.  They aren't facing tough questions because they really do not understand the situation they've got themselves into.  Some of their decisions look to be backfiring now and it will be a joy to see them but I am slightly concerned that the country is about to suffer a massive series of financial blows.  I wonder how many businesses will fail in the early New Year as all the stealth tax comes in and affects the bottom line?  

There are very few people who actually appear to know what they are talking about and understand the overall picture both here at home and the wider world.  The BRICS alliance is building outside of our own bubble and no one appears to see that the opposing market is larger than our own.  Look to see where sales of goods are outside of the US and Europe and understand that these countries no longer need out market to sell to, it's easier for them to get millions more customers in these BRICS countries than the small market share we present to them.  Why is no one looking at this?  Because they are too concerned with policing hurty word tweets and navel gazing than actually getting on and running a country that needs to pull its socks up and start being productive again.  Higher energy costs, punitive taxation and damaging nonsense on transport policy (sure we are all going to ride bikes like they "used to" in China, Korea and Taiwan).  

Please let's get some adults in the room together with some senior industrialists, economists and strategic thinkers and maybe, we can actually see what's coming and do something about it.  It appears to me the best places to do business are going to be the BRICS countries but we are destroying our ability to compete in our own country let alone globally.

I am of course most impressed that my local parochial council have given extensive thought to the impact of climate change on our little hamlet.  Rather than looking after planning matters and keeping the place tidy and their other duties they now have the weight of the planet's CO2 emissions on their shoulders.  It must weigh heavy on them!  Sarcasm Off! 

Stepping Up The Business Input

 I guess that this was always my part of the deal, along with getting the product to market and that was/is to get everything ready in terms of advertising and all the relevant things like Accountants, Insurances and so on.

It's quite a feat I think that I've got two websites working, email systems, a developer and accounts ready to launch the product.

Even without the partner now, I would have still been head down at my desk doing all of this.  It's a relief in some ways that I don't have someone looking over my shoulder as I don't particularly work well with criticism (constructive or not) especially when there's been no input to the thing I am working on.  It's OK to contribute but I don't like having holes poked in stuff that I've produced and against my plans.  Most of the time. they wouldn't have even have known let alone understood what I was doing anyway.  

There's a fair amount of work then to get things ship shape and ready for social media and other marketing avenues.  It's not the sort of thing that you need to have traditional adverting for although, who knows, once it gets some traction, perhaps it might be.

Right now it has as much chance as anything out in the market I guess and my instinct tells me that if it gets traction, it should do well.  If it fails, well then we can shut it all down I suppose.

Our competition isn't great - there are some massive empires out there and they charge a lot of money for their Apps but we aren't really competing with them.  We are much smaller fish but also we are agile and better able to respond to the market we are in.

The strangest thing is that I am now on my own in this endeavour and I was only ever there to assist someone achieve their dreams.  I am just running the business and they were providing the ideas.  At the 11th hour they've fallen by the wayside and I suppose, so be it, I juts need to get on and complete this now.  At least I've been able to call the shots over the last month or so.  Looking, yes it's been about a month since this all kicked off. 

I do feel sorry for him that he's come this far and then backed out of it but another part of me thinks that the way he did it was particularly unethical and nasty too.  Maybe he is ill. I may never know as he doesn't want to talk to me.  He's also found out the hard way that the developer cannot talk to him either as they are contracted to the business.

I suppose the only thing to do is to work my way through it. 

Back on subject - maybe

I was horrified to hear that my mother, who had a scan about a month ago still has not received her results.  They were testing for Cancer.  They say it could take up to 12 weeks as they are short of (I think) radiologists!  Now call me old fashioned but with a staff of 1.6 million people you'd have thought that they'd be able to muster some health professionals in there rather than equality and climate change managers now wouldn't you?

Well, I am sure that the Government's answer to this will be to lob a few more billion into the system and show how well they are funding it and stating that "Lessons Will Be Learned" and all that old guff.

Honestly, no one believes them anymore about the "World Class NHS", "Our NHS" etc.  It's a cult, as are many things these days.  The doers and the workers have to make the best of it whilst the managers and the hangers-on get to take home huge salaries for work they are under qualified and do not get monitored for.  They were cr@p 30 or 40 years ago when I worked in the system.  Utter waste of time and resources.  They were still recently and the waste beggars belief it really does.  

Add to all this the ineptitude, the tribal rivalries, the lottery of treatment and the non accountability of these people and you have a right royal mess.  Of course, like just about everything else in this country these days, you'll be told you are a health service denier or something like that.  All of these things are cults, they have tales and stories woven around them to big them up but just look at the effectiveness and the stories everyday folk tell you and is it any wonder that it's all falling down in front of your eyes.  It's the Emperor's New Clothes - the vast majority can see it but the small minority keep up the pretence.

With an inept government (small g) and politicians who don't seem to have done a day's work in real life in "charge" we are living through the Nero period and you can make all the noise you want but the best thing is surely to let it crash to the ground whilst all those in charge stand mouths wide open, agog, incredulous as their empires burn and collapse.

Retirement - Are We There Yet?

 "Are we there yet!?" as I recall was often heard from the back of my car when transporting my children.  They used to do it as a joke which was good although occasionally tiresome we all thought it was very amusing.

I often ask myself the same question as I should be retired but I am involved in this business / project that should have finished some years ago and should be being tested on the great public at large.  The fact that it is six years late is a matter for debate but with being abandoned to finish it alone now, it adds extra pressure on me to either make a go of it or close it down.  The easiest would be to close it down but the Gauntlet picked up has for all my life been where I am at.  

I can almost touch the final product - almost and even after all this time, still not fully.  Half of the project delivered may just give me the opportunity to actually make some money from my close to 8 or 9 years investment.

My own stupid fault for getting involved I suppose.  I'm waiting for the inevitable, "you stole this business from him" and other such trite, non-knowledgeable guff that you often get when friends hear one side of the story but do not take the time to investigate the other.  I like that some will say that I caused a rift, forced out the guy and so on.  Nothing could be further from the truth of the matter.  In fact, it was because I spoke about the way the business functions and the need for professionalism to come to the fore that suddenly and without any explanation, I got a disgusting letter and that was it a complete burning of bridges, no way back and here I am left with a problem.

Oh well, at least I shall endeavour to make a go of it and see where we get to.  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work and I can shut it all down without too much to worry about.  Like a lot of people though, I imagine he's ruminating on what he's done and is possibly too proud to mend things.  I'll provide opportunities in the New Year that he can take if he wants to.  After the disappointment and all the work I've put in to make his dreams reality, I felt I probably deserved better.  No matter, I kind of hope that it does well and then I can enjoy my own satisfaction of a job well done and who knows, there might even be some reward for it.  There's been bugger all in the last 8 or 9 years!

So I'm not there yet.  Much as I'd like to be, I'm not retired and I'm somewhere I had no idea I'd be in and in many ways, I was expecting to have built this, handed it over to a business person to run and be sat back getting occasional rewards.  Now I have to run it myself but hey ho, that's where we are.  At least I have done all of the work I need to do to get it up and running.

I feel sorry for the other chap though, he's thrown his toys out of his pram and I think it is dawning on him that he's walked away from everything.  He attempted to chat to our sub-contractor who rightly explained that he doesn't actually work for him he worked for the business to whom he is contracted.  I think that must have rocked him and I understand he got angry about the situation but if you walk away and resign, you have no further input.  It is now my call and I've made commercial decisions (to stay in business mainly) that he would not like.  It's kind of tough but it was either do that or shut it down.

Onward and Upwards - who knows maybe I'll get this bit finished soon and can actually start to run the business and finally get something out of it!

Pathetic Stupid Imbeciles

 Our Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary have gone over to COP xx and committed to a further 81% cut to CO2 emissions. Now here's the thing.  If you were to wipe our little country off of the map entirely and it were to sink below the sea what would that do to global emissions?  Any ideas?  Answer below:

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL.  

Yes, it is minuscule almost un-measurable. Asia has increased emissions so much that ours (now less than 1% of world emissions) will be swallowed up in the next months.  The pain we are suffering now, about 25% of our energy bills are green tariff, although who trousers all that money is unknown does nothing whatsoever for emissions even if, and no one can actually demonstrate this, CO2 is the bogey man.  It just costs us money and prevents people being comfortable and industry to work.  The higher this goes the less competitive we are.  Simple mathematics and we are run by a ruling class who can't use a calculator.  They could ask AI but are too stupid to know how to turn on a computer let alone actually use one!  

The massive self harm these idiots inflict on us through ignorance and stupidity makes you wonder who they are working for.  It isn't us.  This is not discussed or negotiated or agreed with the public, it's just inflicted.  It feels as if there will be a concerted roar from the public soon.  It will get louder next year when the massive self inflicted damage done to our economy filters through.  It would not surprise me if we get a 2008 type reaction to the current situation.

I look at my little business and wonder whether it is all wroth it.  You work hard for someone to just come and take a great lump out of it.  They didn't put any money in, no effort, no assistance and in fact huge barriers to success but when you succeed they want their pound of flesh.  What do you get in return? Inflation, bloated public services, woke ideology and the square root of sweet Fanny Adams.

On A Mission!

 It was a long day.  My car needed a service and an MOT (an annual road fitness test).  SO I booked and the idea was (I thought) get the service done so they can sort out anything that needs to be done and then test.  I knew it would be a couple of hours to do.  So I duly left the car and went into the local town (about 15 minutes walk) and did a circular walk, had breakfast, looked around some shops, walked up the river past the locks and weir, wandered around and came back, went for a coffee and basically spent 3 hours away before commencing walking back.

So when I get there, I see the car has been turned around facing a different way only to be told that the MOT is done but they haven't started on the service!  FFS, so another hour and a half to wait - to which I expressed my surprise as the email and text I had received didn't say this but had emphasized to be there when I had turned up!  SO I took myself off for a long walk (they did offer to put a film on but I declined) and so I walked the outer ring road and then down past the Mill and the Church and when I felt that I really was getting tired and didn't want to go around the blocks again I popped into one of the very old pubs.  I'm not drinking but they had a list of non-alcoholic beers available and my favourite one is Adnams Ghost Ship and at 0.5% it fits the bill and it's a nice tasting beer.  

I spent an hour having two delicious beers and catching up with the Crypto Market which, after all these years, has taken off again.  It's been an interesting ride and probably still will be - like a roller coaster on steroids! 

Anyway, finally I got a call and went and got my car which seems, for its age, to just need a few tweaks to get it back up and fighting fit.  It passed its emissions tests and that's what is annoying with all the ULEZ and LEZ zones.  If my car passes all the governments tests why should some snotty council clerk make me pay to drive into their area.  Which I don't anyway (except London which I can't avoid).  Well, I say London, it's not really, it's green countryside but that doesn't stop them.

Currently, I'm doing everything in my power to not pay parking, not pay LEZ and so on.  They can all go and sod right off.  If they could, they'd tax the air you're breathing. What I was encouraged by was that the majority of car parks in town (where they've put up prices and increased the time these are payable) were at best half full.  They always used to be packed and so maybe, they will see this loss of revenues.  Big name companies are showing signs of going bust and it appears to me that everyone is hunkering down after the budget and I'm sure that there will be a big fallout soon as prices have to go up and taxes too.  People aren't investing and so that is going to cause some problems further along the line.

I'm just being me and being stubborn and obstinate.  I'm sweeping my chimney later today so I can get my log burner ready for winter.  I hope to get that all functioning nicely ready for next week's cold snap! 

Car Service & Test Day

 Well that came around quickly and I am impressed to note that I have done less than 4000 miles this year.  I really have cut back on driving and I have tried to use the bus and walk where possible.

Super impressed that I found one of my nice shirts and I fit into it.  Losing all this weight (I guess around 2 stone or around 13kg) now means that I can start to fit into old clothes and my exiting ones are now loose and so much more comfortable.   It's quite nice to not have that tightness and also to be able to see my feet LOL!

So that's good. At the weekend and last week I had a glass of wine with my meal and as there was a little left over brought a bottle home and had the two glasses left in there.  I haven't touched any beer for a long time.  I have bought some for Christmas but it remains unpacked in the hall ready for then.  I hope that I will have an indulgent Christmas but again. after that, it's back to the Keto/Carnivore diet.  So far it really does seem to have worked well.  I think that you always want to lose more weight and quicker but as I remind myself, I didn't get fat overnight it took some years.  

Covid was a bad time as we were just sat at home with not much to do and I was just drinking (and enjoying doing so) in the warm hot months we had, sitting on the balcony and watching the world go by!

Hopefully, my car will be OK and they can service it and it can go on for another year.  It's hardly been used and so I'd hope so.  Whilst they are doing that, I am going to have a wander around the town and see if there's anything worth purchasing.  I'm not a great shopper, I have most everything I ever want and so I'll just see if anything takes my fancy.  

Monday Moanday Blues

 Although, to be fair, it isn't that bad a day.  If you have Crypto you'll know what I mean and since Trump won, the markets have been going up which is good as they've been iffy for the last few years. SO I am seeing a good return for my patience.

I made a rule to only put in what I could afford to lose and so far I am doing OK but it is a real roller coaster ride. One of my investments did over 1000% in the first few months but dropped way back again and now is around 100% which is more like it.  Things move fast and they move incredibly in opposite directions, it's not like the stock market which is an oil tanker to these jet boats.

So that's OK but you have to despair at the situation our government are making for themselves and us for that matter.  Then just look over at Germany and see what woes they have.  We are highly likely to have all sorts of financial woes I think and warning bells are going off all over the place.  The EU could do a bit of foot shooting with the gas imports and we of course, just shut our stuff down.  We've had 2 weeks of overcast weather no sun, no wind and finally the sun came out and the skies cleared.  You can probably guess how much wind and solar energy contributed to out power in the past few weeks.

Ignorant gits the lot of them.  They are enough to make you want to let them loose to hurt themselves, give enough rope, watch them run real fast and get jerked back to reality.  They just seem so incompetent at, well, everything they do. They are beginning to run scared as the public are calling them out wherever they go and they don't like the constant jeering and name calling.  

Time will tell I suppose, I've lived through similar before but not quite so many imbeciles as this.  It will be interesting to see what happens as the slow motion car crash occurs.  It's coming apart already and they don't know what to do other than to implode the country and the economy.  Even I can see the numbers don't work!  Oh well, it should make for interesting TV and I've got the Popcorn in!

Still there's probably more to moan about but I'll try not to let it get me down.

Retrospective

 Bladder Cancer is treatable and curable.  That's great news I think.  It is a bit of a nuisance as it can recur which does worry me and I'm sure other past sufferers. Someone happened to mention it last week and it was strange really because they suggested that I really did look ill and they were all worried about me.

I said that I felt the treatment was actually the worst part as I didn't know I had it until the presentation of the symptoms and the operations and the treatments for Immunotherapy were  actually quite challenging although not all the time.  You could do fine one week and the next it felt like you'd been hit by a truck!  Writing this I do reflect that I was looking quite ill and grey or drawn.  That's the worry too I think as you drag around this pall of grey doom around you.  

Apparently I was brave!  I don't recall being brave at all.  To start with I was sh1t scared and that I was going to die from it.  However as time went by I learned to live with it and deal with it.  A good hypnotherapy session got my head away from the fear of going into the Hospital and I can't say that anyone enjoys all the tests and so on.  I certainly hated them and still do as a matter of fact.  Not brave.  Perhaps stoical and practical might be more likely.

At this present moment I'm reasonably content with my health.  I've been on no booze (or very very little) since July and I am only having the odd glass of wine and odd beer now.  I am looking forward to Christmas so I can have some beers and wine etc and also let myself have a few off Keto meals.  I am more carnivore / keto than I have been previously and I am intermittent fasting.  I'm about 2 stone lighter.  My belt has gone in a notch almost two and I feel OK.  I wished that the fat around my middle would melt a bit quicker but as it took many years to put on, it will take quite a while to lose.  However, a few inches off already and visible signs such as loose clothing and feeling a lot better than I have for a while.

Head space is still a problem but not as bad as last year - I was in a horrible place then.  There's lots of sh1t going on with the business as well as me just trying to get on with things that are on my to-do list.  I wonder whether a short break might assist me?  I don't know, something is needed and of course, now I am on my own with the business, I am committed to getting that sorted out! I am thinking of getting things moving in the business and then taking a short break but we will have to see how things turn out.

Around 25% of my life was taken up with Bladder Cancer but almost all of that time was to do with treatment and follow up procedures.  I was pretty much clear of Cancer in the first 6 months.   Thereafter it was follow up operations and tests that took their toll of me because you are never sure are you?  You never know when they might say "It's Back!!" 

It's survivable and the know how to treat this.  That's great news. 

Control and Manipulation

 As an accused "conspiracy theorist" I find it amusing when things I said some time ago come to fruition or every now and then I get a direct score goal when something I say is proven right.

I was just sitting here and thinking how we are manipulated.  I was watching the TV, The Lord Mayor's Show, and listening to how questions were worded and it just reinforced my firmly held belief that we are being programmed and misled most of the time.  There have been clear lies and disinformation published in the past 3 or 4 months that to me are obvious and a slap in the face to the electorate.  BUT so used to these lies are we that people seem to ignore them.

A Government department stated that National Insurance and VAT would not go up and yet in the budget that's exactly what they did do.  NI has gone on the Employer and VAT on Private Schools.  Right in your face a damnable lie.

We are fed stuff all the time and yet so much isn't quite the truth, it isn't quite there, it certainly isn't enough for you to decide what is going on, these days they have to tell you what to think and so deeply programmed are people that they repeat these half truths and lies as fact.  If you should dare question them about a "Fact" you'd better watch out as you are likely to get called out as a Nazi sympathiser or some sort of denier.  Really.  I've been called all sorts because I dare to question accepted thinking and group think.  It is well worth re-reading 1984 and the ministry of truth stuff in there.  You can hardly believe some of the stuff coming out of their mouths these days.

Example.  Donald Trump.  No matter what you think of him, in the UK you'd have thought we'd released Fred West back into the building trade.  Grown adults accusing our American cousins of voting for something that they didn't understand.  We've got form on this with Brexit and the losing side still go on and on about how they lost a democratic vote because we didn't know what we were voting for as in the 52/48 was somehow made up of 52% who didn't know what they were doing!  The 48% of course did know what they were doing.  And you hear them all being experts on US Politics and EU Law and Middle Eastern conflicts etc.  Rather than having or holding an opinion, these days they actually take side and pursue anyone who doesn't group think their way by yelling and shouting hoping for capitulation rather than by reasoned discussion.  They cannot actually discuss things or provide reasoned argument.  Try it, they fly off the handle and say you don't know what you are talking about - this from somebody who patently doesn't weigh up the arguments on both sides.

Whatever I think about Donald Trump is irrelevant.  I'm not American, it will affect me of course in some way but not enough to say that the Amercian voting public don't know what they are voting for.  The usual social media keyboard warriors are of course out over here and our "celebrities" or persons of notoriety as there's bugger all to celebrate whoever some of these feckless human beings they parade on TV shows are.  SO these beings are melting down and as I often say, an Actor impersonated people for a living.  They have a right to an opinion of course but don't thrust it into my face.  It's your opinion, keep it.  When your opinion gets demolished at the polls don't scream, kick your feet and arms, throw you toys out of the pram because of it.  They act as if someone is going to come over and personally smack the on the nose (shame they don't actually do that eh). 

We have MSM employees needing counselling because Trump won!!!! WHAT, the MSM and their balanced view?  Of course, the place is infested with liberal wet luvvies and they are all going to be claiming PTSD (another thing none of them realise is bloody offensive to our armed services etc).  Poor little luvvies.  I wonder if this is the result of stopping bullying?  Maybe if they had been for being so snowflakey when they were younger they'd have grown a thicker skin and learnt to grow the f**k up.  

How much of this behaviour is because we tolerate it?  The media manipulates it and then publishes these weak minded idiots melting down because of someone in another country winning a poll.  They aren't so bloody weepy when it comes to other horrific things around the world, in fact these "be kind" brigade are all on the side of aggressors and terrorists when it suits them.  

But who made them think like this in the first place, who feeds their phobias and diseased minds?  Who makes it acceptable to behave like this?  On many occasions when I've seen behaviour like it before they would actually section these people, they are a danger to themselves and others.  Back in the day anyone acting like a cat or just being as weird as some of these people are would have been taken away and evaluated for mental disease.  What person in their real mind acts like a lunatic or a spoilt teenager, screams and records themselves doing it and then posts it on social media.  Are these "sane" acts?

We normalise these things these days and don't deal with it.  We moved care of those mentally ill into the community and yet, surely these people need to be de-programmed and to be calmed down properly.  How can you have people acting like its the end of the world over something that isn't even our control?  

There;s a lot wrong in this world and how it is communicated to us and how people react to it is like some mass hypnosis event or mass hysteria.  The MSM tells us how we should react to events not what the even is, why it happened and two or more views about it.  We no longer get experts on TV we get representatives of pressure groups or NGOs who have a vested interest in one side only of the subject.  Treated like sages these people never give two sides to a story and only the side they represent.  They tell you what to think, how to think, how to act and normalise extremism.  

Wake the f**k up people. 

What Fresh Hell Is This?

 Absolutely useless.  My shares in a major global business have been moved.  I couldn't trade a week or so ago much to my annoyance as something IT was wrong.  So I now et the email saying your shares have now moved to so&so and you can login here and do whatever you've got to do blah, blah EXCEPT.......................................

No, the tens of thousands of shareholders like myself were greeted with a website closed for maintenance from 6pm Friday night to some ungodly hour on Sunday.

WHO THE BLOODY HELL coordinates this huge swicth and then prevents you accessing your shares?

What an absolute shower of sh1t.  These people are so effing stupid they should go and work for our useless Government and (not so) Civil Service where this level of incompetence is not only prevalent it is positively encouraged!  

When Communication Goes Blank

 Could be me I suppose.  I often get emails with queries about family history, long lost relatives want to know stuff and I spend time finding it out, sending them details, connections, links to websites and then that's it, not a thank you or anything back.  Why is that?  Just a thank you would be nice surely?

Similar to another query about some historical aspect and after finding out about the query.  It's all gone quiet again.  

It's a bit disrespectful I suppose but surely it doesn't hurt (especially as google and other apps fill in the response for you these days) to just say thank you for your time and effort?

Oh well, onward and upwards.  

Where Did That Time Go?

 I suppose we all ask these questions when we are reminded of things in the past and we then calculate when that was.  My mind transported me back to a party that I went to when I was around 19 years old.  I was by then quite fit having worked for 3 years on and off on a building site and a very good friend and I started dancing and for a short while it went quite ermm, well, you know, things took their course I suppose.  It was a great evening and night and that was it, we didn't go any further, I have no idea why and it was something that I recalled only today.

She was indeed a very beautiful lady and I remained in touch until just after our first child was born and we all met up and that's it, the Christmas cards dried up and I haven't seen or spoken to her or her husband for 35 years or so.  That's sad.  Her husband and I shared a house together for about 10 months.  We were great buddies and I have some amazing tales about our adventures and the girls got on great and all was well in the world.  I didn't seem to be bothered that she decided to go out with my friend and then marry him.  It didn't matter at all really, we were all school friends and there really was no point in being bothered by these things we were after all, all meeting, going out with, breaking up with people we knew from school and there were lots of parties and getting to know one another and so on.  I did write these down in my biography but I think perhaps it might be worth ripping those pages out. 

Then I thought to myself that was 48 years ago!  It seems like less than that but of course it isn't, I've lived through so much and now a grandparent so it is what it is.

What I have been meaning to say is that these recent flashbacks and relived experiences seem to be connected.  A lot are past partners and situations that arose, lost opportunities and what might have been.  Funnily enough like this one and perhaps another 10 or more I could think of.  Yet, there's more to  it than that.  I think that I am recalling those times in my life when I was happy or perhaps alive is a better way of saying it.  These instances were, looking back on them, amazing times, there was no "agenda" to this, there was no pre-planning, it was just as they say "in the moment" and that moment is when you just let whatever it is happen.  That night, that dance with a friend and I'd call it love, but a sort of melting together perhaps I might try and call it, was a spontaneous thing, no thought, no malice, just two of us.

I've mentioned before that there have been times in my life where I moulded into the surroundings became lost in the sounds, smell, warmth and being-ness of what I was doing.  Perhaps driven by love (let's say) although I think it may be two way there being in and being loved?  I don't know because on other occasions that wasn't always the case.  It is easier to look back and recall these times than to be aware that you were actually part of it there and then.

What I do recall is the touch and strangely the smell and an awareness of sound but it not being overbearing.  Just melting and heady perfume or the wind, colour of the fields, swaying and the smell of the corn and the warmth of the sun.  Things like freshly cut grass or perhaps the smell of flowers, a Privet hedge is bloom, roses, damp woodland.  

A old friend mentioned a few names of girls we used to know the other night so perhaps that's what triggered this memory.  He also reminded me of someone I was close to when I was in my twenties and that brought back thoughts of late night car journeys and buying cigarettes in petrol stations on the way home from work.  Some amazing things to recall all many years ago now.  Where indeed did all that time go?

All Quiet Still

 Yesterday was the day that my ex-business partner handed over 10% of the business in shares to his young friend who turned 21.  Now he's done that maybe he will sit back and have a long hard think about what he's done.  Having burnt his bridges and left the business, he has some explaining to do to his friend about what he will do next. He will not know when or if the product will launch or if the business will survive and that's still not a given.  His input is gone and his ability to answer questions on progress too.

I am left to either continue or to shut it all down and walk away.  By this time next week I will probably know what that is to be.  It was immediately stressful and annoying as I have been left to deal with the fallout.  

Of course, now, I'm "in charge" so to speak and can do what I want as sole Director of the business.  I'd run it as if he was an integral part of the business but it was always set up that I'd run this side.  It frees me up from having to accede and play the diplomatic game.  I do not need to step on egg shells when discussing the supplier who is late (horrendously late) delivering nor for all the changes etc.  I should be able to get this to market without feeling that we are never quite going to get there.

The supplier has been warned that this is the last throw of the dice too.  So that's good, I've had to re plan and rework what's going to happen and I've positioned it in such a way as to be able to make a decision next week on where we are.

I feel sorry that my ex-business partner can no longer continue the journey but I am surprised that he decided to burn his bridges and cut off all opportunity of even discussing his decision.  He cited his wishes hadn't been carried out and the letter confirming that his wishes had been carried out but he was not answering the phone to me to clarify the missing information from his instructions.  Obviously he felt that I was ignoring him which he now knows was not the case at all and he decided to send abusive and threatening correspondence, resigning at the same time.  A bit silly but there you go.

An old saying was that he "Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory" is about right here and I've written about this before where it is almost a self fulfilling prophecy and people talk themselves into defeat.  After 10 or even more years of struggling to get here, with the test version actually with us and just a few iterations before delivery, he concocted a walk away event that must be very hard to get to a point to recover.  His problem not mine.

Sure, I'm left with some issues around his leaving but his actions just remove him from the scene entirely and we can soldier on without him.  I just have to hope that he doesn't go around telling people that I stole the business and his idea from him.  As long as it is all run above board and properly that is not the case and his last set of letters can bear witness to this sudden turn in events.

Onward and upwards (maybe).  

Meltdown Continues

 Not mine, contacts on Facebook and other Social Media.  In the UK I am privileged to follow people who appear to know everything.  That's right, there isn't something that happens in the world that they don't know.  Me?  Yes I do know a lot but in general, I tend to be more of a sceptic than someone who espouses opinion, I'd generally come from some sort of proof point, a scientific angle or a position that can be argued or at least debated.

It's amazing how many UK based people don't like Donald Trump and ask "America, what have you done?"  These are the same people who didn't like the Brexit vote and want it overturned.  Democracy sort of states that if the majority voted that way then your minority opinion whilst it was listened to did not convince those who voted against you.  There's a sort of "we lost, it's not fair we want another vote until you think the same way we do." and it doesn't work that way.  If your arguments were valid, then people would have voted for it.  I didn't expect the vote to go that way and speaking with French and Dutch friends I was probably as shocked as most even though I voted to leave.  

I actually worked in Europe for quite a while and more so in Brussels and Paris.  I stayed in the same Hotels as our MEPs and NATO people and they all looked to be having a good time.  Meals, at our expense, were not a snack and a beer let's say.  But, you know, apparently many people think that we no longer trade with the EU, ECC or whatever you want to call it.  A little closer look might fact check.  I know I still get things from Denmark and Holland for sure quite regularly and Poland too.

Anyway, as usual, I digress.  I was struck with the Facebook comments from a specific set of my contacts whom I know have this sort of Remainer, Democrat, Labour type leaning and I can only applaud that after the disappointment of these socialist, let's be kind (they never are) very opinionated commentators, they buy every word the MSM gives them.  Here's a way to find out.  Ask them about something and listen carefully to the answer.  It's normally a headline and perhaps sub headline that you will get on a subject.  They cannot normally go deeper on a subject.  I always rattle on about Climate Change (as it is now called).  Listen to the key points people have about it.  It will be the Arctic is melting, Polar Bears are declining, Methane is being released, Forest Fires and Hurricanes are increasing blah blah.  

Scratch the surface and remove the veneer and it starts to fall apart but not for the headline writers and people who espouse these quite clever information bites.  Ask what an Inter-glacial is, ask why in fact the Polar Bear population is increasing, ask where are the global data (temperature) sensors located across the land and the sea.  At that point, either they are going to start yelling at you that you are a Climate Denier or they are just going to keep quoting you headlines.  There is nothing below that, no in depth knowledge and no research.  Do you research as I reminded the lady who told me about Climate Justice.  What was the outcome of the trial and what exactly does that mean?

So back to our American Cousins.  We in the UK have no idea whatsoever about America other than Hollywood, Westerns, Presidents, Disneyland and a few geography facts.  I hit Seattle once for half an hour and so I've never really been there.  I've been to Canada but of course, they aren't anything like Americans either.  We don't live in a massive country, we don't have the political system or the opportunities that they have.  We laugh at their comedy programmes but that isn't real life either.  The land of Cheers and Frazier, Friends and so on does not exist.  I worked for an American company and the workers that came over were VERY different to us.  Our culture is quaint and also not well understood.  

Working in the City of London was quite an eye opener to my American colleagues, bless them.  I always remember that the lunchtime drinking culture was particular frowned upon.  

We will probably never understand our cousins.  They appear to love their country and are patriotic, God faring and they like to win (we like to take part and participate).  They don't have our propensity for having left leaning socialist type Governments.  Europe is possibly the diametric opposite to the USA.  That's probably why we'd never understand the politics and the unique nature of that country.  We are terrible at sitting in our glass house and throwing stones.  We compare everything to our own lived experience and let he who is without sin cast the first stone.  These luvvies have done a good job in tearing down our country to the mess it is in now.  We have a government that cares not a jot about the people it governs.  Net Zero has doubled the cost of our fuel and so we go cold, industry closes down and moves to China and we are all happy as we have saved a few grams of a molecule who's contribution to Earth's atmosphere is 0.04% yes look how clever we are.  These people dance around words as you mustn't be PHOBIC whatever the f**k that is.  You can't say this, you can't say that, don't give offence (which is actually taken not given BTW) and so on.

These useless Oxygen wasters, having made everyone poorer, less well off, miserable and now angry then turn their attention to the USA and have the temerity to state that the people of America didn't know what they were voting for! That they should have done what they, the keyboard warriors of Facebook and TikTok, wanted.  Honestly?!!  Not one of them can tell you why this happened and what the USA means to its people.  Just look and listen and you can find plenty of sources that are not MSM and you will learn a lot.  

Here is a great commentator writing from experience who puts it in layman's terms it makes great reading and may perhaps explain why "we" in the UK don't  "get it".  https://open.substack.com/pub/konstantinkisin/p/10-reasons-you-didnt-see-this-coming?r=4s3fs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email  

You Can't But If You Could, What Would You Do?

 I thought about this during all these flashbacks and whilst I know you cannot actually do these things and what is done is done, I wondered, what if you could go back and change something in your life what would it be and what outcome do you think might be different?

It's all hypothetical anyway of course.  I realise limitations include my personality which is pretty unusual and specific (INTJ look it up).  So I'd have to be something I'm not to have made decisions but here are a few:

Pick Up On Subtly:  I now realise that there were a couple of relationship opportunities not taken. A couple of young ladies in particular were great friends but now I can see that there was far more than that (you tend to replay things and then stuff becomes clear).  The platonic relationship probably wasn't. 

Not Be So Angry:  I was never an aggressive angry person but I hated ineptitude, stupidity and other such traits.  I perhaps should have learned to deal with these better

Don't Smoke:  My word I used to enjoy a smoke and a beer and a smoke and a beer.... I got cancer, apparently it was highly probable to have been all those smokes!! 

You Cannot Fix Regrets:  This blog - it comes from deep inside, lost love, disappointments, the way things turned out, loss of "friends", lost contacts, how you could have done things better.  I used to have the worst head issues you can imagine because I analysed everything and as an INTJ, that's what you do, you never stop scenario building, theories are built in your head, ideas constructed and then torn down by logic and analysis.  Intuition also takes a big place alongside judgemental views and then execution of the idea is normally incisive. That's why we make good Project Managers and so on.  It's all a bit Matrix Film - which strikes well with me.  There can be no other outcome and so on.

Let It Go:  Hardest thing is to let it go after a decision that may have had an affect on my life and as above there may be regrets but letting those go is very difficult but that's because the last years have been chaotic and dramatic for me.  Breaking up, finding your dream love and losing it, cancer, new love, shattered dreams and all those things and fighting those demons.  You never stop fighting them but you can learn to let them go and now I sleep well at night and generally take things as stress free as I can.  Recent business chaos did affect me as it was serious and I was badly let down I felt but it's a week or two on now and all is well.  I can let it go.

The only real thing I think I would have actually changed is meeting my Angel and having been able to build the life we discussed.  It wasn't to be and every now and again my mind sends me a picture of some happy moment or other and for a short while I'm filled with the what did I do wrong, why me blah blah stuff knowing full well that I know the reasons and I think and hope that she is happy.  For a short time I feel that emptiness of soul that comes with a love lost.  In a parallel universe that is not so and we are together I'd like to think.

Let The Meltdown Commence

 Watching the Labour Party win with a reduced vote in July was very disappointing and like many things in this world, those in the know realised that sh1t was coming and it would be bad for these are not people who should be in control of a country and they aren't really the adults in the room.  And so it came to pass that within 4 months they had near enough affected everyone that thought to vote for them and the rest of us too.

They've never been good at big government and they used to be good at local government but they now have career politicians in the ranks who just don't understand that you can't alter the course of the planet's orbit by taxing us all more.  Hard lesson but it will come and bite them and sooner than they realise.

We didn't have the meltdown expected here because, mainly most of us are adults and most of us know what's coming and that they'll make a pigs ear of it and if everyone is like me, they'll get no cooperation.  I like that they are afraid to meet the public now and are getting jeered and heckled everywhere they go.  If you kick your electorate in the teeth then you should expect it.

Looking across the pond and our MSM have started to go into full meltdown about the US election results.  It isn't the first time that they have backed the wrong horse and suddenly their eyes widen and they start screaming for their mummy!  When the Brexit vote was announced the stunned silence and startled looks were hilarious.  These (they like to think they are elite) liberal wet highly paid non neutral opinionated wastes of Oxygen flood the MSM and I just don't watch them anymore.  They come on the TV I turn it off and go and do something useful.

So watching the meltdown here about the US Elections is glorious.  Watching people on Facebook losing their minds is priceless -  what do Brits honestly know about US Politics?  We really do not know that much and what we get is filtered and presented to us homogenized and filtered for us by the above liberal elites.

So, the best thing to do is watch and enjoy the self-flagellation of these people, the hysterical screeching and shouting and wonder what ever happened to logic, reasoned debate and the assimilation of evidence and data and a rational, sensible review of what happened.  There's way to much emotional hysterics.  We never used to act like this and it is because I guess no one has ever had to argue their case properly so we can see your point of view.  These days people just yell at you as they don't have the wit to do anything else.   

And Still These Reflections Come

 I don't know if there is a reason for reflective thoughts maybe it is a sign of something. Just now I was sitting here and my grandson has just been for Fireworks and some Supper.  It's nice to see him and we miss him because we used to look after him two days a week and now he's at school so we only get to have time at weekends and when school is on holiday.

It reminded me of seeing my grandfather, my father's father.  He was a really nice man, quite dapper and charming.  A really interesting man but also blessed with "our" sense of  humour and so you were never quite sure when he said things if it was real or not.

When I was an apprentice I worked up in London and I'd occasionally drop in to see them if I was around.  He developed cancer of the throat and had to have a tracheotomy.  He could speak by covering the hole in his throat and I used to try and get to visit him in Hospital mainly taking lunchtime off to go and see him or seeing him at the end of the day.  I was lucky that somehow I could "make time" between site visits.

One particular day he was having a lot of trouble and we were just about managing to communicate as he also had a notepad and pencil but I could see that he was really frustrated and Flash - that's one of my recurring dreams - it's just flashed before my eyes.  It's me leaving the hospital via the other entrance/exit and I see this in my dreams and I've just clocked why!

Back to the story so I said my goodbyes and waved to granddad and he gave me a weak smile and a wave and we were both a little miffed that we hadn't been able to chat like we had before.  Well that was the last time I saw him because he spoke to my parents that weekend and he had arrived at a decision that he didn't want us (my brother and I) to visit anymore and whilst I was disappointed I think I knew that he didn't want us to see the last stages of his life.  My mum and dad pretty much told me that he wanted us to remember him as our grandfather and writing that just shook me a little.  I miss him even now and there were a number of things, as children, that you recall.  The reward for a visit was always a shiny coin of some sort perhaps half a crown which we would thank him for and hold tight or give to mum for safe keeping.  He would occasionally give us a little glass of Ginger Wine which stung and then warmed your throat!  

I like that he made a decision like he did and so I never got to go and say goodbye but I think maybe that's the right decision to remember someone in the best light and not being the last thing you remember about them.

Is The Grass Greener?

 Regrets fuel a fantasy of nostalgia and I found myself daydreaming about the past and of course, I can't change it and the mind is very "clever" as it depicts a world as you'd like it to be and not as it was in reality.  The illusion is that if things had been different, there would have been a different outcome but that's not guaranteed at all.

I find recently that these flash back daydreams are showing me a different path had I not made certain decisions but to balance this, some of these decisions were not mine to be made, it's all a set of different paths that coincide, conflict, align and so on.  I doubt I have any control over these things for they happen in real time at the time.  You can I suppose reflect on these and do a "what if" analysis but the only benefit I can see is to help you learn from your mistakes if they are, in fact, mistakes.  Who knows what would or could have happened.

The mind is a strange thing and these little voices and thoughts are not helpful.  You just have to realise that they are just a distraction and not really anything useful for getting on with your life.

Is the grass greener?  I very much doubt it.  Would things have been any different? Yes of course they would but whether for good or ill, no one can tall and it doesn't matter either way. 

The Ancient Art Of Self-Destruction

 It seems that I have witnessed a number of times people being self-destructive.  The "voice in the head" often talked about by Eckhart Tolle is perhaps something to do with it but so many times either knowingly or unknowingly people have made irrational decisions, have lied or avoided situations and then had destruction wreaked upon them or have just talked themselves into it.

My business partner has just done such a thing and what is worse, burnt all his bridges in doing so.  In 5 days he went from slightly eccentric to full on madness and wrecked his side of the business he had worked hard alongside me to build.

Another person I worked with decided to (as he was the chief shareholder) demote me as we were about to go to a shareholder's meeting, to the scribe for the meeting.  I had worked outhow to save his business as he had bought software that wasn't actually his (the copyright notice for where it had been obtained from was clear for all to see).  He hadn't undertaken a key piece of security to have the data encrypted and he was running out of money.  As a Director I had produced his "get out of jail free" card and had a presentation to achieve this.  The meeting was great as a few knew what I knew, they also knew that I was going to table the answer to the problems.  

The idiot started to lie through his teeth and when the meeting got angry and I do mean angry, he finally turned to me and I reminded him that I was no longer the Ops Director and he had made me scribe.  As he had done that and was now floundering I left him to it.  On the way out he suggested the meeting had gone well.  I called him an Oaf and questioned whether a village somewhere was missing their idiot!  I resigned that night citing a number of reasons.  

Others have talked themselves out of a winning position and ended up in the very place they said they'd been in before - the self fulfilling prophecy. 

It helps to break business & personal stuff apart and it helps to analyse what you've got and I feel sorry for my ex-colleague.  He never wanted me to "get angry" with out supplier and reined me back as he didn't like confrontation (funny that as he's threatened me in writing).  SO now he's gone I read the riot act to our supplier and all of a sudden I have full cooperation and suddenly all of the deliverables are appearing.  Coincidence?  I think not.

I could probably write a book (I'm sure someone would have got there before me) where defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory.  It happens a lot more than you think and I'm a realist rather than the pessimist most people take me for.  I am a lot more optimistic than people know, I have to be as I'm a project manager at heart.

Strange how people destroy themselves especially in business.  It's almost as if they predict their future and then everything aligns in them to make sure that failure is the end goal both planned and actual.