Sixteen Years Ago

 I just saw a not on Facebook that it was 16 years ago when I lost my hearing and when this tinnitus started.  I was so ill - I roused myself to do a talk about the history of the Lodge and we had all sorts of things going on including a Banner re dedication and I managed to drug myself up for that day.  I ended up seeing my Doctor who was very worried saying that my ear drums were swollen and he gave me the highest antibiotics he could which actually did the trick.  I was so ill though that I missed a couple of assignments on my University Course and had to drop out which was sad but inevitably, whilst I loved my course, to try and catch up when I was that ill wouldn't have been possible.

I was doing so well and my assignments were all attracting good marks too.  Oh well, it probably wan't meant to be was it?

Today I am about to go and get some work done in the garden and remove a fallen tree that's landed on my oil tank!  That needs to be out of the way as it will be inspected as part of the work next week when we get the MegaFlow tank changed.  This is a main pressure water tank and I didn't think it looked good when I called the Heating guys in to maintain the boiler.  It needs a new one, it's expensive but should last 25 years if properly maintained.  These guys are good and so I'm confident that they'll do a good job and they always check the tank and lines as part of their job!

Interesting times in UK finances.  I recall the 1970s as I started work just after the 3 day week and remember the blackouts and all sorts of nonsense going on, strikes, rubbish piling up in London and so on.  I certainly hope that those days don't come back but the way this lit are going I'd be surprised if we don't have some serious problems coming down the line at us.  I'm not sure where they think that taxing us to the point of our own bankruptcy is the way out of their self inflicted own goal but I often said to my bank "How can I been overdrawn when I've still got cheques in my cheque book!"

The Tail Wagging The Dog

 It has always been a pet peeve of mine that minority groups get preference and special treatment over and above the majority.  The whole purpose of living in a democracy and somewhere that upholds equal rights is that, well, call me old fashioned, that everyone is treated equally.  It should not really matter what you are, who you think you are, what you consider yourself to be etc., you should have all the advantages that equality should bring but, no, they don't want that, they want preferential treatment to my detriment.

Equality is exactly that.  It is not forcing the vast majority to agree with whatever difference you have, I don't have to agree or like anything you stand for but don't you dare force me to do so.  Here again, I don't care if you colour your hair, wear clothes that I wouldn't be seen dead in or practice some medieval witch thing.  It doesn't matter you do what you want in the confines of your own home or tribal meetings or whatever just don't force me to have my life changed because you want some sort of overt recognition or to change the law so that I have to change my way of life.  Go about your own life in equality and peace and leave me the f**k alone.

That's all I really ask.  I don't care what you are or what you say you are, I don't care for your way of life, your religion or any such thing, what I care about is you interfering in my life.  I don't impose my ideals on to you so don't you think that you can impose yours on to me.  If you want equality or your lifestyle imposed on others be prepared to be savagely repulsed.  How about those posing as environmental groups?  If you want to protest then do so but don't stop me doing what I want to do, don't block roads, smash up petrol stations and put your generally unwashed bodies in my way.  Stop telling me what to do, I don't tell you what to do other than to f**k off out of my way or similar.  

What makes these tiny minority's brains think that they are right, that they have some moral superiority and therefore can lord it over the rest of us?  I've found that ignorant people tend to have some moral high ground that they've found that makes them dictate to their fellow citizens that their tiny, pea in whistle minds have something to add to society but as they are unable to properly scientifically communicate this in open discussion (without losing their tiny minds and yelling stupid words) they feel that actions designed to p1ss off their fellow citizens and generally making a nuisance of themselves is justified because two or three of their grey cells aligned more in an act of gravity rather than logical argument! 

Leave me the f**k alone whoever you are.  Go and do what the rest of society would do and argue your case properly.  So many problems are caused because activists and pressure groups and let's face it, weirdos, actually get to run things these days not on a meritorious basis but on some strange selection process based on a spreadsheet of ensuring that they employ one of each from the tick box.  It doesn't work, it has NEVER worked and it cannot in the future be relied on to work.  We are seeing the stupidity of employing unsuitable people into organisations and the stupidity of doing so.  I suppose as they go on destroying the fabric of society and the places in which they work must be poisonous in the extreme.  You see some unbelievable stuff going on and hopefully it will utterly destroy these businesses and organisations who in their dying throes might, albeit I doubt it, realise what has led them to this place.

I never had to deal with spreadsheet hires apart from those our customer's made.  I was employed to do a particular job and I has to upset people or rescue businesses.  The worst ones to tackle and turn around were public sector ones and those being brought out of nationalisation and being made private.  This is where these people hide.  Many don't appear to have any practical experience in doing things properly and all seemed to be directly, in your face, sometimes aggressively, resistant to change.  Change was what was needed in all cases and there was a culture of laziness and push-back to any initiative.  Yet they were the ones who complained loudest and for whom the work I was doing would have benefited.  Very few had the wit to realise this.  It wasn't up to me to manage these people (it would have been interesting if I had) but I would deliver the solution to the Directors and Managers and they would have to work out how to make the changes.

On the occasions when I was allowed to do some managing and was accorded the proper delegation powers I could generally pull the majority of the team out of their malaise (for this is generally true of these organisations) and get whole departments moving as an interim director or manager.  An anecdote if I may here.  I was generally there to provide a shock and awe type assignment (not always) and I generally tried to get everyone to come on the journey with me.  So they called me in asked for some "strong" project management and I gained the relevant authority and went to work.  Generally after talking to each of the staff and the managers and so on, within a few days you'd be able to work out what was wrong.  Get people in to discuss figures and performance data and then come to a conclusion and plan.  

Once you've got a picture of this there are a few courses of action that probably need to be taken.  Sacking three or four of the big problems being one of them.  I'd go to HR, explain what I wanted to do and that I wanted these people out of the department but if they wanted to retain them elsewhere in the business that was their prerogative.  Generally they were told to clear their desk and would be escorted off of the premises and many of the problems would disappear overnight.  Why am I saying this?  Well these were generally the sort of people who were put up with for years and weren't doing their jobs, they should have been dealt with years ago and they held the whole organisation back.  Find a few good workers from what remained, put them into management positions, train them to be managers and within a few months you had a new enthused department.  Make decisions, tell them what you were going to do, keep your word and so on.  It's not that difficult.  

It looks these days as if management are held to ransom by those who hide behind other excuses for laziness and ineptitude.  It's fashionable to be different and part of a minority if you don't have to perform your duties - but of course - I sure that not everyone is like that.

I wonder when we will wake up to this tail wagging the dog fallacy and grow a pair and fight back.  Business are held to ransom by it and now government are too.  Look at the current crop of politicians and the front bench are made up of people who've never really held a proper job down and who seem totally lost.  The trouble is they have strange overblown confidence in their "abilities" whereas we can all see they are totally incompetent and leading the country into some pretty bad times.  Their only answer is to punish the very people they are meant to represent whilst spending our money like its going out of fashion on vanity projects with no possible return on investment.  

Another Rant Incoming

 Why are so many people still actually alive?  Or why aren't more people dead perhaps?

So what am I ranting on about now?  Well, it's social media init!  I mean, what ever happened to looking stuff up and having a few books to hand or just old fashioned common sense?

It's the pointless postings.  Today "Oh I bought some joint of meat as it was on special. How do I cook it?"  In an oven maybe?  What's wrong with people, they ask a random question like this is a Facebook Group and you have to wonder why they couldn't do what I'd do and at the least that is to Google it FFS!  It doesn't end there, random people asking how to do electrical or plumbing work and once again, as a trained engineer I'd be screaming for them to STEP AWAY NOW!  It's lethal if you don't know what you are doing or how to do it or the inherent dangers this stuff poses.  

It worries me that these people are just too think to realise that they need to breathe in and out to live - do they know? Has someone told them?  Just what is happening to people's brains.  Brains are amazing things and we barely use their capabilities yet it appears that these people are only using one or at best two cells to live their lives with!

What did cheer me up was Lee Anderson's speech yesterday about David Lammy.  He said something along the lines of there are 6,000 villages in England and if they took the village idiot from each and moved them all to Tottenham then David Lammy would still be the local village idiot! I felt the burn from here :-)

Anyway, how come all these people are still alive and p1ssing me off, that's what I want to know?

Will I Ever Get Used To Hearing Aids?

 I was out at a meeting yesterday and wore my hearing aids - not sure that I am ever going to get used to them in fact I struggled to hear anyone in the bar.  I tried different settings and I tried to change the volume too and gradually I was able to work with them but I decided to take them out half way through the meal.  They are great at listening to the people sitting behind you though  I could hear them as clear as day!

I guess it is practice and adjustment that will get it right but it was not easy and whilst it worked some of the time I guess I just need to work out how to switch between modes and keep persevering.

I don't know if it is linked but my tinnitus is bad again this morning and I need to try and sort that out.  My GP surgery has excelled themselves sending me a request to take a BP reading and then a few moments later to take some sort of questionnaire.  I realised I needed to go online for it and the next day I went to check it out but the link had expired! 

It was cold yesterday or as the BBC would say, hottest day eva! Driving home there were either overly cautious or completely bonkers drivers not driving to the conditions.  Where we live there's a dip in the road that is like a small skating rink.  That WAS interesting coming hole late last night.  I've driven many times in ice and snow and so it I approached the problem knowing it was going to be there.  With an AWD car it is sort of OK to drive over it, I wouldn't have liked to be driving a two wheel drive though and this is what our politicians in London don't understand, out here we need cars like mine, it's a necessity not a luxury.  My car is permanently covered in mud and probably animal poo from driving up our road and locally.  It isn't a city car as we don't live anywhere near the city.  Anyway, that's another argument no doubt I'll have to pay the ULEZ charge as I went into London - well the very outskirts!

This morning, no hot water.  I hope I have fixed that - it looks like it - the second two port valve has failed which is "interesting" as I replaced both of these around 5 years ago and both have now failed!  Built in obsolescence?  Anyway, the Heating man is coming soon to put in a new system and I hope that we will have a much better heating and hot water system.  We have a new boiler (well 3 years old) and we now have to get the tank and controls re-done.  It's never ending and thank goodness I know how to do these things!  With a bit of luck that when it is changed it will be the last time I have to repair and maintain the system myself I'll get the heating guys in once a year to do it! 

What? Really? Are You Sure?

 For my sins I saw BBC news last night (small n) and was once again surprised by the "information" I was given about the California Fires.  Dreadful thing and apparently it wasn't caused by wild fires it was caused by Climate Change because it's 1.5 degrees warmer in 2024!  Yep, that's why folks.  I'm a cynic as you probably know and sceptical about what we are being told and more importantly, how we are told.

If you told me wildfires are quite common in the Western USA I'd agree with you and right up that Pacific coast too.  Generally it doesn't much matter if it is 1.5 degrees warmer when these things start and they don't start through a small rise in temperature there are factors involved like out of date infrastructure, electricity and water being two problems especially if you have overhead distribution that is many years out of date trying to run modern high energy things like electric cars, air conditioners and so on. If you don't implement fire breaks and you leave combustible materials lying around like scrub and autumn leaves in an area where wildfires are natural then you are providing fuel for fires.  Sure you have the high winds and they are also well known and so what else could be the issue?   It happens regularly not so bad as we have seen recently for sure but have we learned nothing?  Is it beyond our ingenuity to tackle this or have we once more bent our knee to the great woke-ism of climate change, environmental pressure groups and other non scientific nonsense that passes as fact today? 

So this chap shows us how 2024 has been the hottest year 'evar' in the last millennia or some such bollocks.  So to demonstrate this post-industrial warming they changed the dates now to around 1850 from whatever it was a thousand or ten thousand years previous. So when the graph came up it didn't start in 1850 or indeed a thousand years ago because if it did it would show the Roman and Medieval warm periods both around 4 Degrees C more than now and the Little Ice Age too.  The new graph didn't start until 1940 and guess what?  The 1930s were the warmest period of the last 100 years and that would be inconvenient.  It's all total bollocks and it just goes on and f*****g on and it's right in your face lying.

So another advert this morning talks about 10,000 tons of carbon saved this year. So is that Diamonds, Coal, Graphite or what?  They probably mean CO2 but it could equally be CO1 I suppose.  Ask Google about the different types of Carbon and it gives you a list of greenhouse gasses and not much about carbon at all?

I was watching how pathetic these people are in terms of their hubris, not only thinking that they can control the weather but that they actually think throwing trillions (yes trillions) at the problem and coming up with some sort of human scale solution is going to affect the planet somehow with all its built in self control mechanisms.  It did a pretty good job without us and will probably continue to do so.  No one is saying that we don't have an impact but you do really need to understand and comprehend the scale of things.  Man has survived by adaption and that is the best way to approach any possible weather or climate Armageddon that we are being led to believe (for the past 50 or more years) that is coming down our way.  Last night it was minus 17 degrees in the UK.  Shouldn't that not ever happen at all with all this climate change nonsense?  Surely we should be enjoying balmy winters, Mediterranean style summers and so on?  That's the sort of weather we had in the Roman period and in the Medieval warm period. When they grew grapes as far north as Newcastle!  

If you see this stuff, ask yourself why are they lying to you?  Just go do some research and don't trust the search engines or similar, actually go and find scientific papers that explain what it is we are seeing.  Look at Earth's passage through the Universe and around the sun and the affect of planetary gravity and wonder if these odd wobbles and elliptical anomalies taking you nearer or further from the sun (where the warmth actually comes from). Do these make any difference?  Do clouds make any difference? They can't model these and why do we need models when we have data (manipulated as it is).

The last thing is that we are gambling on these computer spreadsheets being right.  It's an all-in bet that we need to spend all this money to save the planet.  Not even the models agree with each other and we used to have a saying about such models that if you put sh1t data in you'd get sh1t data out.  I've seen hundreds of optimistic sales forecasts showing we're all going to be millionaires and not one of them, not one, has been right.  You can only go with what you know and most things are a gamble but they are generally a calculated risk.  We have career politicians who've never had a real job, have no scientific background and certainly no real management ability making decisions on shaky data affecting us all.  So far it is costing every household £300 per year to GO GREEN.  That cost is going up and there are no benefits, no one did a CBA at all on it.  There's no ROI planned in and the first bunch of renewables can't be renewed just dumped into landfill.  Very environmentally friendly.

When the adults return and take charge I hope they destroy these people who have just ruined our economy and lied to the populace for what?  If they've lined their own pockest at our expense then they need to face charges too.  

How To Destroy Society

 Well our County Council have taken their 30 pieces of Silver and applied for the whole county to become a Unitary one!  That would give us a Mayor (and we've all seen how successful that is in London where crime rates are sky high, costs to commuters are through the roof,, preference is given to certain members of the public and not others and he's now about to charge for use of access routes into London too (tunnels) ) that's just London, look at other cities and you see the same problems.

Businesses are closing down, footfall is down, crime is up etc etc.  Our Council have suggested delays to our elections by two years!  Two years and that's a loss of democracy and I'd suggest it isn't lawful, I wasn't happy they did it for Covid let alone on some Labour Government policy that wasn't even in their Manifesto but then again neither was punishing Old Aged Pensioners, Farmers, Women and Children and eroding our savings and putting us in harms way financially.  

The latest figures look dire and they don't seem to be able to grasp that if there isn't an economy you can't collect taxes if we don't have jobs and the ridiculous green agendas, the rush to the bottom of the world's economies is happening.  There's soon going to be the death spiral of fighting the economic firestorm with the fuel of taxes.  Pathetic the lot of them.

They really don't know how to communicate with people or talk to anyone, they are as corrupt as their predecessors and don't even hide it.  The ineptitude of senior ministers and their inability to even gauge the mood of the country or the damage they are inflicting is one of the curious things.  The open their mouths and spout some bullsh1t and immediately you can see there is a problem with whatever it is, the impact, the social injustice, the protection of one part of the population to the exclusion of the other.  It fair takes you breath away that anyone would think let alone say such things but they do.  I can see the issues and the problems this new excremental policy will take and the costs, the impacts, the risks and the doomed to failure outcomes.  They cannot see this.  Why????? 

Anyway, let the train wreck and car crash unfold, it's already coming apart at the seams and it requires them to take away democratic process and to paint over the cracks and not deal with the root causes of the problems we face through cr@p government of the last 20 or more years.  There's an unwillingness to deal with it and we have perhaps the worst batch of shameless corrupt incompetent witless low life "politicians" to throw at it.  Not one of them is fit to hold great office and we now see through them to their Whitehall controllers who also don't appear to have a clue or a plan unless that has been paid for and provided by big business. 

I really am p1ssed off about losing my vote for me local councillors and whilst I've done my bit in writing and complaining, those who are set to gain the most benefit from it are obviously right behind it.  I see you and I am watching you.  So surely if this happens there is no taxation without representation?  Perhaps the withdrawal of our council taxes until we get our votes back will make a difference?  I doubt it, courage to fight these sh1t bags has also disappeared.  I doubt many people are bothered that they've lost their vote or of the consequences of these massive changes.  They'll be pretty p1ssed off when someone from 70 or 80 miles away decides that an estate can be built in their road without any local consultation!     

I'm Sort Of Glad That I'm Retired (Almost)

 I had occasion yesterday to write to my local councillors who are attending a meeting tonight on whether to suspend elections that are due this May.  Yes, delay these by two years whilst this new pathetic, incompetent bunch of amateurs decide whether to have huge Unitarian councils replace our local system.  Now, whilst I dislike councils and have come up against their pig-headed stupidity before, they may need review and shaking down to get rid of some of the utter waste that goes with them but to suspend the constitutional right of citizens to choose who their councillors are goes beyond what they should do.  But, I forget this is the dogmatic ideology of these people who've never really had a proper job.

Councils are obstinate and rules based and I recall my local council wanting to give me a role in contractual and commercial negotiations but couldn't because I didn't have a Degree in ***ology or whatever!  They'd employ someone from Uni who hadn't done the job before but an old crusty Poacher who could have turned Game Keeper - no.  Another problem is that councils litigate way too much.  They do not think like normal people.  Surely the best way not to spaff away money is to "Love, Honour and Negotiate" it's simple to work on a compromise to a problem but they've got solicitors and lawyers on the books so they use the heavy blunt instrument to do something that a cup of coffee and a biscuit and a chat would sort out.

 I went to a Council in "special measures" who denied they were in special measures and didn't need us to help them sort the mess they'd got themselves into.

Both my councillors wrote back and agreed and were also stating that an extra two years would mean that those standing down would have to serve years they were not planning to.  Hence I'm glad I'm retired.  I couldn't actually live with these people having watched them on the portal at meetings they really are a Dinosaur breed, driven by their allegiance to their party not to looking after us, their constituents.

The country looks to be heading for financial distress and the Bond market and the GBP took hits.  The measures they took to promote growth have actually done the opposite as anyone with a bank account and credit card could have explained to them.  You can't go for growth by imposing huge taxes on the people you want to work hard to make that growth nor can you punish the risk takers, us business people, by making it difficult to employ anyone, expensive to use any sort of energy or indeed to put power into the workers the way they want to.  It isn't the public sector and we aren't charities.  

I think that there will be some interesting times ahead.  I think they need to rename to role from Chancellor to Chancer.  They are in complete denial about any of this and it's going to come as a hammer blow to them.  You see them sneering and being actually aggressive in the spotlight of scrutiny and yet if they were to have a little humility and the good grace to reverse the damage done they might yet still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat but I fear it is the opposite of this we will receive. 

If You Can't Dazzle 'Em With Brilliance....

Baffle them with bullsh1t was the old phrase used and practised by many I knew too.

The Government are just a mess at the moment and there's something not quite right with the PM and indeed some of the Cabinet too.  They seem almost as if they are AI generated and not quite real at all.  Perhaps they are under alien thought control?  Whatever they are though, it's just pathetic to try and watch them.  I squirm the moment any of their nasal high adenoid type voices start speaking.  They spout a monotonous load of old tripe and repeat it often as if the old adage that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.  Apparently, I'm now "Far Right" for having an opinion,. for asking difficult questions and for demanding the truth.  

It's really makes my skin creep when they come on and just lie to your face.  It's this deceitfulness that gets me, they say they are doing good for various members of the public when their actions have the diametrically opposite effect! 

They are absolutely pathetic, disgraceful, lying, corrupt (it wouldn't surprise me) low life human scumbags.  They think more of their own selves than the safety and security of the very people they have sworn to protect and look after.  Let's hope heads roll soon though.  How they can keep this level of lies and deceit up without showing any embarrassment at all is beyond me.  I'd not be able to live with myself if I had done this to millions of my fellow citizens!  

Cognitive Dissonance

 Is a psychological state of discomfort that occurs when someone holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or values. It can also refer to the tension that arises when someone's actions don't align with their beliefs. 

I point you to our present (and who knows for how long) PM.  Rather than tackle things directly he misses the point and prattles on about something which is entirely connected or in fact a direct result of his policies.  Blaming the previous party or indeed Elon Musk or going off on some complete tangent, there's something quite strange about him (and his cronies).

He's looking to Europe but they are in a mighty mess with Germany and it's economy collapsing under the weight of net zero madness coupled with higher energy prices from sanctions imposed.  In fact most of Europe is suffering.  Look at Austria and France too.  

It's as if he's blinded by his ideology and has no cognizance of the mess he and his party have caused nor the damage they've inflicted on every one of us, the voting public.  I don't think that there is an area of the population that has escaped these draconian rules whilst they rake in the expenses and privileges heaping jobs for the boys among their supporters and wondering why we are upset about it.  The latest "green" fuel duties on aircraft will impose a further burden on families who just want a two week summer break.  Car tax increases, fuel duty up, NI up, heating allowance taken away whilst giving big pay rises to their mates in the public sector.

I do think that there is an awakening of sorts albeit a slow one, perhaps in a few months the voice will rise to a crescendo and they might wake up and realise that there's not a boost in the economy, that all our money is being taken in tax and given to people who've neither worked for it or deserve it.  I like that people are getting very angry with these idiots and that they are also uncomfortable choosing carefully where to be interviewed lest a difficult question be posed.

I certainly hope they implode and that they are all seen for the incompetent, lowlife, corrupt and loathsome bunch that they really are.  

Old Friends & Who Will Die First?

 A touchy subject this one.  I've had a few close friends pass away and back in 2020 was probably one of the most shocking but last year we lost an old school friend.  I only saw him once in the 50 years as he'd emigrated to Canada and it was pretty shocking that he died quite suddenly after being diagnosed with cancer.

It suddenly occurred to me that our little group of friends have been together since school days so we've known each other for 55+ years some longer.  Here's the thing, last year two of of them had quite major surgery, heart surgery as well as hip replacement and a shoulder operation.  Another had DVT and couldn't fly away on holiday.  Of course I'm a Bladder Cancer survivor and here we are still all together but it was a bit strange that my mind should think of this today.  How would we feel if one of us were to depart this mortal realm now or soon?  It would hit home at our mortality I think.  

I lost a friend when I was in my early 20s.  I'm surprisingly back in touch with is widow who lives in NZ now after all these years.  She and I were great mates when we were just starting out in business life and we used to meet up in London at her digs or in the local for a few beers.  A lovely girl/lady and it was platonic although, she had a lovely smile and personality but we were just friends.  He husband (this is a few years later) had a congenital heart condition and went off to play Squash one evening and that was it.  I think we were 23 or 24 then.  That was absolutely shocking to us all.  OF course you get over it but I think when one of us goes it will be a big shock and we will all be thinking about our own mortality.

The Great Rip Off

 I saw a video on Rachel Reeves (Chancellor of the Exchequer) yesterday and it's around 35 minutes long.  It was pretty painful watching and called out not only her qualifications for the job but also the plagiarism ( his words not mine :-) ) and it was actually quite concerning that what we have here is an ideologically based financial blueprint that appears as if it based on a US Treasury approach under Biden that was muted at Davos and so we have something that would, with the might of the US Dollar and the size of that country struggle to work copied on tracing paper and attempted to be implemented here.   

The obvious and glaring problem being that we are no longer a power house (only in our minds) and we have politicians who cannot think strategically (or for themselves) and have no idea how to coalesce this into a whole state wide, fit into the world economy system.  From the explanations of the various parts of the budget it's pained us all into a corner and burdened as we are with the highest taxes since the end of WW2 we are probably going to be asked for more and more but if we are no longer able to work and get paid more then we will not have the money to pay for these horrendous impositions on us. 

When you then start to look at these taxes and strategies you quickly see that there is indeed no real incentive to employ people, set up a business, carry on your business, go out and find work or cooperate in society that has been built that way.  Bit by bit we see people losing their jobs or natural wastage of people in business not being replaced.  Costs imposed are passed on to the workers and consumers alike.  The Government heaps pay rises onto public sector workers who have gold plated pensions and excellent working conditions and tells the rest of us to pay up for those pay rises.  The Public Sector may be necessary albeit in a much smaller way than now but what does it do in terms of bringing money into the country?

Fiscal drag makes us all poorer and will start to pull pensioners into its grasp later this year (probably next financial year) and personal allowances are not going to change until 2028.  What's the incentive to work if personal allowances don't even keep up with published let alone real inflation?  Fuel or should I say energy prices have tripled since just before foot shooting Covid and it's ridiculous lock-downs, such harmful financial and physical nonsense.  Inflation is probably running at 8% I'd guess.  So each year your finances take an 8% hit plus all your bills have gone up by that much and in the case of energy three times or more.  It isn't sustainable and you are trapped if you aren't getting more than 8% on your savings (net) or getting that sort of pay rise per year.  This is over simplifying the problem.  The main thing is that it's a trap and an unpleasant one.  

Now, as a pensioner, I'm pretty much trapped as I get a regular income after having paid into the system for 50 years.  Every 4 weeks it drops into my bank and I do think next year it will attract tax!  My savings, of course if I use those, they'll be taxed (and they are).  If I spend any money on the house I've to pay 20% VAT and on and on it goes.  There's taxes on taxes even (look in depth at fuel duty where they tax the tax) and on and on it goes.

If you invest in something a bit riskier you get taxed if it comes off and makes you money (sure you can offset your losses but if you choose well you can't) If I do well in business they want a lump of that in corporation tax and any money I take out as a reward for setting it up and running it.

There is no real incentive to work, there is no real incentive to get better and to grow the overall wealth of the country.  The government, far from their mantra of economic growth, appear to have done everything possible to stifle that growth and in fact reverse it.  I see people are seriously curtailing spending and the High Street and as I understand it online stores report a slow down in post Christmas sales.  People are hunkering down, they are not sure what is coming next, they can see fragility in the work place, redundancies are incoming and there are many mobile people leaving to go to Dubai and Singapore etc.  Those who can will leave and it's generally the high net worth people who do taking their Tax £s away with them.  Why should you stay here and work hard for someone to take it away from you.  If it was a fair system, if we all benefited and you could see something for your money and it was good value for money, then you'd probably stay.  Gone are the days of good public services, half the staff are down the beach or answering phone calls whilst on holiday or sat in their homes.  Society has become two tier with preference given to non natives over the populace who's taxes pay for these things.  

It is a Huge Rip Off and is hypocritically shoved in your face by the politicians who I am certain loath and hate us and by sections of the people who live here who feel that their "rights" trump all of ours.  That's a two tier society and no one has the balls to tackle the very divisive society we've become or to treat us with some respect.  We, after all, pay for this shower of sh1t to do our bidding, which they don't do.  I do hope that they just keep digging themselves into a bigger and bigger hole and cannot work out how to get out of it.  A pox on their houses. 

Well The Anger Is Getting Greater I Notice

 Our politicians must think that we cannot see or hear them or to realise that they are gas-lighting us.  The latest about turns on "This is what I stand for" is truly abhorrent.  The grooming gangs scandal or rape gangs as I think they should probably be called is yet another about face but this time it's far worse than that, this stuff goes to the very heart of society as it was an ignored problem that got worse because "We didn't want to be accused of being racist!"  and that's the problem now.  The inquiry would of course point directly back to a weak and fallible establishment.

Not that we need an inquiry to see that but we do need those who knowingly let girls be raped in their hundreds perhaps thousands are held to account.  People at the top now were in charge of certain areas that need the investigative conclusions from something like this to be brought to light.  It's a further cover up and right in your face.  These people are lying right to your face all the time, there's no disguising it now, the continually lie on all sorts of things and we can see them.  Toto has pulled back the curtain and commentators who seems to move and steer like gigantic tankers in terms of picking up and acting on these scandals are finally beginning to show signs that there might be a story here.  Hurry up lads, we knew that 15 years ago!!  FFS..

I wonder how long the patience of the people will be tested.  Many politicians are openly heckled and yelled at in the street (rightly so) because they've succeeded in p1ssing everyone off in the country now.  I imagine there are only a few areas of the country that are happy with things and they'd be the metropolitan elite and the enclaves of foreign territories set up in the UK.

The anger on YouTube contributors has ramped up a notch this week and I expect it will get louder as the economy starts to tank and the horror of net zero starts to bite especially as it's very cold now.  Having taken away the £300 heating allowance for pensioners the bright spark of a Heath Secretary suggested that Pensioners really need to put on their heating during this cold spell.  Energy prices have tripled since 2020 and they've taken away a small amount of respite and demand that pensioners put on heating they cannot afford!  That's what we are dealing with.  Their own records show that up to 4,000 could die from the cold this year by taking away the fuel allowance but they did it anyway.

They look like Deer caught in the headlights at the moment not understanding why the economy is shrinking and surely it cannot be because of all the draconian, nasty, spiteful sorts of things they are doing.  Children are being forced out of education because of VAT imposed on private schools, that is blowing up on them "We didn't expect that" spoken in a nerdy train spotter voice.  Farmers are rightly p1ssed off at IHT rules changed for them, employers are likewise going to halt employing people as to do so erodes profit margins the tax on working people (that they said wouldn't happen) is horrendous, so many retailers are now closing down and all because they wouldn't have any adults in charge.  

It's like an unsupervised kid's party this government.  Absolutely useless, painful to watch their childish shenanigans and the latest one of unitary councils gathering up our borough councils into a big blob is also doomed to failure.  Who wants some useless sod from 50 miles away deciding planning on our backdoor?

I really don't like it but we are in deep sh1t this year and I don't think they can see a way forward as their heads are shoved up their own arseholes!  I really hope that they are so despised that they cannot go anywhere without being heckled and yelled at.  Waste of oxygen the lot of them! 

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. 

What The Hell Were You Thinking

 Uttered by me on many occasions and almost hourly these days.  So they've knighted the London Mayor.  Speechless what on earth were they thinking?  The trouble is I don't think that their ideology allows them to think, it's very catholic and totalitarian, almost dystopian at the moment and this headlong rush to the bottom isn't over by a long way.  Everything that they touch is the opposite of Midas and is rapidly turning into mahogany (soft and brown) stuff.

Education is being destroyed and for no good reason other than spite.  Maybe, finally, people will wake up to what and how these people are?  It is no longer education it is indoctrination and still, no one is angry.  The answer will be more tax and more fines and so on until there is nothing of any value left.  It's already happening and 2025 looks to be the year that the economy collapses alongside some of our European neighbours.  

De-industrializing in the name of a cult (that of Climate Change) does absolutely nothing except show how f*****g stupid you are.  Destroying your own country to appease fanatics is not exactly a grown up approach to this and it will end in tears and more damage to us.  Already people are paying substantial energy bills and the time will come soon when we will only be subsistence living.  There wont be any money to spend other than on food and fuel.

It worries me that there may soon be a large snap against all of this and no one can see it coming.  If you tax the cr@p out of people and they don't see anything for it, then why should they cooperate?  I'm trying to find ways of just not obeying and not cooperating.  It would be nice that everyone in the country started not complying and stating that they no longer wish to be "governed" by these people who think they have some sort of authority over us.  But then I expect too much of "the people"  when I was in business we used to have a saying that 98% of people want to be told what to do and the other 2% were project managers!

Oh well, let's see how it goes.  The list of wasted stuff goes on and on, the oppression of the people continues and at some point someone has to say no, enough is enough.  Let it come sooner rather than later and let's hope that the damage can be undone.  You can imagine that they having spunked all the money away will have to try and work out how to pay to put it all right again.  

That's A Bit Better

 I was in a very dark mood yesterday.  I'd woken a few times during the night and the last time around 5:30 I decided enough was enough and went downstairs to try and get to somewhere bigger.  Claustrophobia is a strange thing it isn't really logical but I've had it most of my life since being squashed into a confined space at school and a few similar things.  To this day I dislike trains and the underground especially, I hate crowded rooms and theatres too are difficult spaces for me.  I calm myself in planes and try and mitigate where I sit and so on.

My hypnotist friend has moved away and he was able to do a number of things including stopping me smoking and to get me OK with going into hospital and facing the operations etc.  I taught myself to be less angry about how long things took in the hospital but that's another thing.

I came downstairs and sat quietly and a series of things happened that just seemed to make me more angry and the black dog descended.  I got the right (moved) bin day but had put out the wrong bins so they weren't collected!  That really made me annoyed as did catching the bin on my car and the contents spilt out!

I was brewing up in my mind how it "always seemed to be me" and all that ego / pain body stuff and whilst I realised that was what it was it didn't make my humour any better at all.  As I often say it's best to leave me alone at times like that.  There are genuine concerns though and stuff that I have to address this year.  I think I've left these long enough.  Stuff that is not in my control and that need to be sorted.  Stupid stuff to some but to me with my tidy mind and practical approach to things it's getting oppressive and the claustrophobia is caused in some measure by these things.  Inability to get to things as other things are in the way.  Rooms full of possessions rendering the room unusable.  Access to areas in the house impeded by boxes and items that make it difficult to walk past without going sideways.

Yes, I need to sort this out, it's gone on for too long and I'm sure this is what is making me be more introverted than I am normally and also bring on the moods too.

Something's Not Quite Right

 Tinnitus off the scale yesterday and today.  Not sleeping particularly well and feeling very hot when in bed and not generally tickety boo.  Actually feeling quite dark inside and the weather - it's foggy again and oppressive out there - isn't helping lift my mood.  Yes, dark, foreboding perhaps?

I think that a lot of this is to do with suddenly changing my diet to a "Christmas" diet too many carbs, alcohol, sweets and so on.  I don't normally eat these things and as you are aware I've stopped drinking beer and only have a very small amount of alcohol so my body is probably wondering what on earth I am doing stuffing the left over Christmas food and drinking beer again plus all the other things like dates, figs and so on.

Add to that I'm beginning to feel disconnected from the house too.  It isn't "home" at all and there's no space to live in, it's limited and at time claustrophobic.  So I'm feeling dark about that and not happy with things as they are.

I always do get depressed at this time of year anyway and it normally picks up when I get involved in something or other.  The trouble is, lots of this stuff is out of my direct control. 

So How Was It For You?

 Nice to see my daughters and grandchildren but cut short which was a little annoying so really didn't get to speak to them much.

New Year's Resolution incoming I think is to do my own thing now and just go and see them and have done with it.  I've been trying too hard to care for everyone and I felt a bit like the House Elf on Christmas Day I have to say.  

I'd worked my butt off and everyone else was tired?!  Exactly.

Think that it might be an interesting year to be sure.  I hope you enjoyed yourselves anyway.  I kind of did but I am feeling a bit like the servant at the moment.  Let's say it's not a cooperative and mutually inclusive time.