Coincidence Or Something Else?

 I wrote recently about when I was younger and losing touch with people and blow me down, I was looking at a Facebook suggestion and the face was familiar as was the name but the two didn't fit together or I hadn't clicked what it was.  I had been dreaming recently and indeed looking back at some photos and reminiscing about those times and a certain lady and how she'd been very kind to me.

By kind I mean that she and I were good friends in a quite platonic way although, I have to say I really liked her but I digress.  I was an awkward teenager and found it quite difficult in social situations.  She was great and helped me out interpreting romantic situations for me.  We went on adventures as a group and I recall we spent a weekend in Paris seeing the sites.

So I saw this chaps face and suddenly it dawned on me that he didn't have his beard and I have always known him with a beard!  We lost touch about 25 years ago and I have no idea how that happened.  He and I shared a house together when we were 19!  We spent a lot of time together at various pubs and we were forever fixing cars his especially would break down regularly and I'd go and tow him home!

So he married the girl I mentioned earlier and previously she had been my other friend's girlfriend too so we all got on together well.  After they married they moved away to Basing and then to Cheddar and had children and then we had our first and we went to see them and that was that, Christmas Cards dried up and email didn't work and I'd tried to contact them but I guess they'd moved away.

Anyway, I've written a note and got a response.  There, on his profile, as lovely as ever is his wife and my confidante from all those years ago.  It will be nice to see if this reconnects us.

Are We Really Doing Well With Cancer?

 I've survived it and I think it was pretty impressive that someone was able to work out how to use BCG and get an immune response to tackle my Bladder Cancer.  A bit like the first person to see a Cow's udder and think "I wonder if I can drink what comes out of there?"  But I digress.

I watched the Cancer Research UK Advert the other day and it now states that 1 in 2 people will get cancer in their lifetime. As an official 'old git', I recall not only when they said it was 1 in 3 but also when it was 1 in 4.  So, what is it?  If it is really 1 in 2 people a 50% chance or more likely a 1 in 4 or 25% chance.  This 1 in 2 figure is for countries like UK, USA and so on.  Elsewhere it is more like 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 some say that is down to detection rates and lifestyle without doubt.

So here, there are a lot fewer people who smoke now and we have a higher standard of living almost zero pollution (you had to live through the 60s and the smoke filled air) and so why on earth is cancer on the rise like this?

I'd like to hazard a guess that the way we eat has a lot to do with it.  Look at photos from the 60s and 70s and we were all skinny and fit as a Butcher's Dog!  Now, we all look like relatives of Mr. Blobby!   Certainly I don't see 50% of my friends with Cancer.  Just thinking it through there's probably more likely 1 in 10 I'd say.  

Diabetes worries me as that is going up and up and no one seems to add 2 + 2 and get anywhere near the right number on that.  We can quite clearly see why there is diabetes and obesity and yet nothing is actually done to prevent it.  As type 2 it can (generally) be reversed but maybe it is more profitable to treat the symptoms than addressing the cause?  

Prevention rather than cure but there's no money in that.  Always follow the money!

Become Ungovernable

 There is something about our present government that is at its heart cruel and spiteful and uncaring.  I felt that before under Blair and Brown too.  There was a constant chipping away at wealth and our very civilization and identity.

I remember "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi and how he said "An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so". He believed that people should resist unjust laws through nonviolence, not violence.  By refusing to do certain things it would make India ungovernable.  

I like to think that the longer this goes on and the more people finally awaken from their slumbers (and get angry) something similar would happen here.  I'm thinking about just being awkward (why is that word so difficult to spell) and not doing things, civil disobedience if you like.  I had in mind making the local council invoice me every month and not take my money automatically and all the utility companies too.  Get them sending paper requests and paying at the second letter or statement.  Staying away from village centres and only shopping at the local Farmer's markets, not parking where you have to pay but walking a little further to get whatever you went for.  Boycotting things and so on.

The trouble is we aren't like the French who seem to have a once a fortnightly riot whether they want one or not, nor are we like our Latin counterparts in France, Italy and Greece.  The British have a far more laid back attitude and you can push and push and push if you are willing to suffer the consequences because once pushed too far things turn distinctly dark.

There's no easy way to become a thorn in the side of the authorities who are elected to their positions by the very people that they mistreat.  It's not a loving relationship and its almost abusive.  We are meant to be governed by consent, that's what the democratic process is there for apparently.  Whet we get is ideologues unworthy of their position, amateur in their outlook and ugly on the inside and generally that bristles through to the outside too.  The infliction of (mainly) monetary pain followed up by the destruction of our heritage and history is unacceptable and it will lead to consequences that no one saw because they don't think, plan, work out outcomes and benefits and rewards.  It's all beating the populace with a stick at the moment and telling us its good for us.

I do my little bit with complaining and so on but feel that the next step is to make it difficult to deal with me.  Huge increases in my household budget are coming in because this government lied.  They were going to freeze them all but no, they've taken the brakes off and kowtowed to their invisible masters and let them all through at once so utilities are going up, local taxes, employment taxes and general taxation - they'll say it isn't but they forget conveniently the effect of fiscal drag by not changing thresholds.  The currency is now unstable, gold is being moved around the globe in large quantities and investment is drying up and money being moved out.  I know I am getting myself ready for this.

They state that inflation is only (whatever it is) but we can see it must be double or perhaps treble that maybe even more and so it keeps everyone poor.  If you are reducing the value of your currency by around 8 or 10% per year then you are in a bad space.  They just haven't realised it yet.

Well let's see what is coming down the line and become ungovernable if possible.

What Have We Become?

I was watching someone who was arrested by the police and taken to the station, at night, stayed overnight, brought back home and apparently it was because he posted hurty words or some such.  One person found them offensive and complained. Not hundreds or thousands, one person.  

These people were what we called the school sneaks, you know the sort, spotty kids who probably spent a lot of time alone staring at some sort of nerdy book and who just couldn't or didn't want to integrate at school.  They'd rat on others and they'd never really have friends apart from their own sort.

So, that's the sort of basement dwelling, anonymous, cowards we have to deal with today.  I have no idea how much time the police spent but you can imagine it was a few hours and more than one officer plus the station staff and then duty solicitor and so on.  Transport to and from the station.  And for what?  Os this guy dangerous to the public?  Did his hurty words offend the one complainant?  What on earth is going on.  There's kids getting knifed, other crime not followed up, just recorded but there's plenty of time to go and arrest someone and tell them off for incorrect grammar and hurty words.

The bottom line on this is that people take exception to it.  For goodness sake whatever happened to ignoring people if you don't like what they are saying.  Remember when if you didn't like something on TV you turned the bloody thing off.  Why sit through something that's annoying you and then after you've wasted another hour of your life watching it and hating it, then write and complain taking another hour of your miserable life in doing so?  

Here's the thing that I tend to do now more often.  I used to (and still do actually) receive emails selling something or asking something and often I am helpful in responding.  Yesterday a case in point where I was trying to assist someone who lives in Africa and listed down the steps he needed to take to join an organisation.  Obviously that wasn't good enough and it got to a point where on the third email which proved he hadn't read anything I said, I used all those lovely tools of blocking the contact and if you really want to, make it spam too so it kills it all off.

Now I could have prolonged the exchange but, life's too short.  I use these tools on my email and on my phone, they are great, you never have to hear from these people again.  I certainly don't go and complain about them to the authorities and just deal out my own form of justice of blocking and so on.  You can of course report people in Instagram, Facebook and the like but that's for flagrant abuse or phishing and similar scams.  If someone is abusive or just downright annoying, block them.  For some of my friends who get all "Soapboxy" and rant, mainly about politics etc., you can put them on a 30 day cooling off period. It just means you don't see what they've posted for 30 days and if they are still ranty then you can repeat it.  There's no real need to report them is there?  It's their opinion after all and whilst it's annoying that they publish and be damned and display a level of ignorance and negativity, naive analysis and reactionary outbursts to MSM headlines, you don't need to dob them in for it, just shake your head, push the pause button and wonder how these people get along in day to day life?

Anyway, that's enough for now I suppose but I do find it disturbing and disappointing that one person can take offence at something and cause a large amount of tax payers money on reporting it.  The cost for someone to be cautioned, the paperwork and all the rest of it is just another drain on society and it appears that the vast majority of these are politically motivated, because they can.  I liked it back in the olden days when you just ignored people, turned the radio or TV off or just chose not to watch or read the stuff that would anger or annoy you.  Just avoid it altogether and FFS get a life you little creeps!  

Not Good At Communicating

It's interesting in an INTJ way that I am good at communicating especially in business terms and hopefully my written work, in my own peculiar style, is generally well received.  I do struggle though in everyday conversation and situations.

An example, would be in conversation with someone they might ask me how I am or some other basic conversational question and I'll generally give a short explicit answer.  What I do not do, as I don't think about it at the time, is ask them a similar question thus keeping the conversation going.  I don't make idle chit chat and it doesn't cross my mind, until a little later, that I should have perhaps asked as it appears rude.  I just don't have the inclination to ask these questions.

I'm OK in terms of a conversation especially about a subject I know about and can bring facts to the conversation but just asking asinine trivial weather and health related chit chat, that's not me.  INTJs deal with facts and figures and we have a planned thought out view of things and so ask me about Climate Change, Business, Finance, World Economics, Cancer, Diet and so on and I will be in my element as I know a fair amount, can present it coherently and whilst I have a viewpoint, I will not ram that down your throat rather I will listen and hear the argument that's presented.  I may add something here to counter but I've learned not to go all in these days.

We were talking about electric cars for example and the chap had a plug in hybrid car with a very long warranty and he knew what he was doing in terms of he worked out how long he would have the car, the warranty cover etc.  He's keeping it for the full 7 years and anything goes wrong it's covered.  It's the first time I've heard that argument articulated in that way and that's fine because he has sat down, done the maths and worked out what he wants and is prepared to pay.  It's more money than I would "invest" in a car and I was explaining about the problem car manufacturers are facing with the EV mandate but I hadn't looked at one point until he said it.  He knew what he was doing, he's done his homework and worked it all out.  He'd have got his return on investment in 7 years, anything more was a bonus.

I enjoyed that conversation.  What I didn't really do though was all the "how's your partner?", "Nice weather we are having?" sort of stuff because it doesn't get you anywhere or at least it doesn't get me anywhere.  These are social niceties that I just don't have or get.  I can do them, I just have to be aware of my situation and tune in to it, then I can join in with this sort of inane banter.  All my life I've been like that I generally tend not to ask the same question I was just asked back to the questioner to carry on the polite hors d'oeuvres of a social gathering.   I want to get straight onto the main course :-)

It's a bit late for me to change now and whilst I can be quite charming it needs the people I am in conversation with to be worthy of me dipping back into my polite chit chat vocabulary.  I much prefer to meet people who you know straight away will be good company and have great things to say and you'll learn a lot from.  They say opposites attract which might be true but I generally mute down if there's a powerful extrovert in the group.  I prefer a sparkling conversation about anything really except football or TV programmes that I have no interest in.  I don't know who half (or more) of these "celebrities" are and so you'd lose me on that.

Yes, strange - I must try harder though to work on my inane banter.  

When Will It End?

 The house maintenance that is....  Today I dug a small bed out for the Beech Hedge and found a grat big lump of metal dug into the ground.  I couldn't budge it even with my pallet breaker bar and so used brute force and ignorance (of which I have plenty left) and my trusty club hammer and bashed it down a little further and folded the edges in, burying it under about 6 inches of earth and a soon to be Beech Hedge.  I went to plant some of the other trees but t'other half was going out so I didn't, instead I chopped up some of the barbed wire fencing I'd dug up!  That can go to the metal waste bin and then I repaired the gutter which had come loose for the second time in seven years.  I hope that I have actually sorted it out this time.  On inspection the gutter ends have disappeared and so I guess they got blown away in the gale as they were there a few months ago.

Then the Trickle Vents need doing so I've ordered those.  The gaps need doing and I've got stuff to do it but the ground is water logged making it difficult to get my steps to stop sinking into the earth!  It's like quicksand by the side of the house.

I have a list of things to do that's about a mile long and so let's hope the weather improves and I can get to do them.  I have a builder coming over to look at re pointing our wall and fillings in some gaps and repairing some mortar joints.

And to top it all I've just found a leak in the airing cupboard where the new tank went in a few weeks back.  I was hoping that it was just a stain from the previous leak but this looks as if it is either a new leak or something not tightened up.  

The garden is so very slowly getting sorted but it takes so long to get anywhere.  At least the little hedge trees look to have taken so far.

New Glasses

 And just in time too.  The old pair are four years old and thankfully my prescription hasn't really changed that much but after the old pair hit the floor on Christmas Day as I dodged a huge steam escape from my oven.  There's a small crack which formed by one of the screw holes and I've super-glued it but it did look like it was getting worse I have to say.  

The new glasses arrived this afternoon and they are OK but as usual they take a little getting used to and adjusting.  I'm sure it will be OK in a day or two but the one lens that has changed is taking a while to get used to as it takes me a while to get used to the new lenses.

More planting and Ivy and Bramble removing going on and the rather small hedge plants I hope will take and fill in some of the gaps we have. It looks as if I can weave some of the existing branches which I will do at some point in time too.

There's lots to be done in the garden and to the house and so I just need to get myself properly organised to do them. It will be a welcome distraction from the dog's breakfast going on with our government - jeez, these people are useless and then some.  We really could do with some adults to take charge as these childlike politicians are making a right mess.  They are eating their crayons and making a right mess LOL!

 They can't even answer a basic question and seem to by lying all the time.  Please, let them be caught out and have to face the consequence of their actions.  At the moment they are getting away with it.  I think we are all just watching out of curiosity and disbelief myself!

Ouch, Brambles Alert!

The hedging plants have arrived 10 days early!  That means I have spent three days now trying to remove clumps of English Ivy like Jungle Vines from the hedge.  Three 1 x 1 x 1 metre bags are full of the stuff and there are gaps in the hedge where old rotten tree  stumps have crumbled away.  

Inside the hedges and around my feet were brambles and my legs are scratched to bits where they have wrapped themselves around me when I have been tackling the Ivy.  It's pretty painful but at least these gloves are doing there job and so my hands are fine but my legs, not so much LOL.

We need to get the plants in as soon as possible to give them a good chance to take root and hopefully fill the gaps.  In some cases I can bend some of the younger tree branches to start to fill in the gaps too.

I've been waiting for a quote to do the front wall - it needs re-pointing and so I daren't get any of the new trees near it whilst they do that!  If I wait any longer I will have to do it myself - which I don't fancy - I feel knackered and aching after pulling and cutting out the Ivy as it is so working on a wall and knocking up cement do not fill me with glee!

Time for a rest and wait for my partner to get home and hopefully we can get trees planted and clean up the hedge borders.  The Ivy has left pockets of vegetation in the branches and so we have compost and rot to deal with.  Hopefully the opening up of this area will allow the trees to sprout from lower down this year and we can get our new trees to start to grow a bit ready for improving the Hedge over the years.  The Ivy though is horrendous and needs to be tackled regularly to keep it down.

Infamy, Infamy....

 "They've all got it in for me!" (So said Kenneth Williams as Emperor Julius Caesar in the 1964 film Carry on Cleo).  

And so it felt this morning as my altered plans were once again,.... altered.  Rain stopped play or a I was going to do continue stripping out the English Ivy from our hedgerow. It's been raining since the early hours and that's a nuisance as I really wanted to get as much cleared as possible to plant the hedging plants I've bought.  We have a selection of Hawthorn, Dog Rose, Dog Wood, Beech, Silver Birch and Holly which should fill in the gaps of the hedge nicely.

But there you go, it's just wet and horrible out there and no signs of clearing up anytime soon.

Well at least the Six Nations Rugby starts tonight and I've been a bit naughty by buying some beers to watch it with.  It hasn't been a totally dry January but I did finish off all the Christmas beer before the New Year - the fallout though is that there's been so much food left over that I have only just got back onto my carnivore diet.  I haven't put on a lot of weight but it is noticeable that I've put on a little.  Hopefully this year I can set to and lose a lot more.

The current government are just a nasty sad bunch of losers.  They behave like spoiled children in parliament and the education secretary needs, well, to put in mildly, an education and to learn some manners.  She comes across as a disgusting poison mouthed common piece of sh1t.

Oh well, has anoyne seen through the extra runways and tunnels nonsense yet?  Huge capital projects that probably wont see the light of day until I have shuffled off this mortal coil.  Just  smoke and mirrors to deflect from the self inflicted, near mortal wound, dealt to the country by a budget that's probably been written by AI and peer reviewed by a child.  

Being dealt a 20% increase in our water bill was a bit bad yesterday considering half of our town has been without water for days due to a power cut!  Where the hell do they think we are going to get that sort of money from given all the other increases we have just suffered?

I'm Always Complaining

 I am though.  Today it was with Amazon who moments after I bought something then held a flash sale and the blatantly displayed a big saving on what I'd bought.  I complained not that it had gone down but that they had blatantly shown a flash to me moments after completing the purchase which was a bit like a punch in the face.  So I suggested that they might like to look at that as it isn't a great sales technique.  A bollocks answer generated by AI no doubt gave me "The Company Position" which all I really wanted to point out was it probably wasn't good for business.

Then there's driving.  In a supermarket car park where people are loading their cars and wandering around with trolleys and the like surely you'd drive a little slowly and cautiously?  No not bleeding Lewis Hamilton in his Volvo - I was edging out past a van and I glimpsed this bloke in the car opposite's windscreen and so stopped, he skidded to a halt near to me as he'd possibly seen me moving out.  I did give him my raised eyebrow look.  What an idiot though, the skid marks were pretty long so I'd say he was hitting 20 or 30 and then had to emergency stop not that I was anywhere near him as I'd halted my car and wasn't even sticking out into the drive.

Then we had a grandchild with us at a restaurant and he's very good holding hands and the like, two vehicles swung into the car park and narrowly missed us and we were on the raised pavement.  What's the point guys, what is the point you can't actually park at that speed can you?  

So those complaints for today along with, my latest one.  We need to sort out our hedgerow it's been neglected and is covered in English Ivy so I ordered some trees to replace a few and to fill the gaps knowing that delivery was to be 10 days which was great.  That would allow me time to remove the Ivy, dig over under the hedge and prepare for the new trees.  Two sodding days they arrived in - 2 days!  FFS.  I've been out there working like mad today and have only got about a fifth of the hedge done.  That's filled up the compost bin already and the heavy stuff is yet to come.  Oh well, it just means that I'll have to give it a good go tomorrow now and hopefully get it finished over the weekend. Let's hope the weather stays fair.

The Art Of Doom Scrolling

 Here I am sitting in my office scrolling through pointless vacuous Facebook posts and rolling my eyes at the bizarre comments and general fecklessness on display and whilst I have done a little work this morning, re-pressurised the boiler and got the driveway gates unlocked and closed (I opened them for the gales we've had - it saves them getting damaged and also overly stressing the gate posts).  I was going to head out but there's a likelihood of rain they say - although it looks OK to me.

The betrayal of the WASPI women was debated yesterday and our Government seemed to be OK dishing out huge pay rises to their mates but not settling yet another glorious f**k up by our leaders.  This despite the PM, Deputy PM, Chancellor etc etc saying they'd sort it out.  That is the general level of lying corrupt politicians we have at the moment.  Either they are so out of touch that they don't understand that the very basics of trust are built on say what you do and do what you say.  This lot have lied and incompetently bumbled their way along and pretend that they know what they are doing.

They amass enemies like my house amasses dust.  I hope that the whole thing blows up in their faces.  Their own MPs are getting roasted by their constituents and rightly so and I imagine many will be wondering what they've signed up to.  These "leaders" are woefully inadequate, have little or no real world experience and lack the basic principles that they should hold dear. 

Totally feckless and unbelievably gullible.  They are throwing good money after bad and expecting things to improve but will not compensate around 3.5 million women who had their pensions disrupted and they are happy to bare faced lied to them.  They supported them to get the votes and then sh1t on them from on high.  They wonder why we hate and deride them?   They cannot argue their way out and so, like so many these days they resort to name calling and accusations of "Far Right" to people who call them to account.  Not so long ago they were opposing everything and now they are in power have proved they are just the other cheek of the same arse.  

The damage it does is that no one takes those in authority seriously now.  Their adenoidal nose speak is horrible and their lecturing us from a position of ignorance is also rubbing us up the wrong way.  I've never been able to lie to people which is a strength and a weakness.  A strength in the fact that I've never had to remember a lie I might have told.  A weakness because people don't like to hear the answers to their questions.  What's the point in making them feel good by lying to them?  

People ask questions sometimes for their own benefit.  When I was ill "How are you today?"  When answered with I'm in serious pain lying on a bed and wanting it to go away they'd go quiet.  The thing was they wanted to hear you were OK.  No one wanted to hear that you might die for example and wouldn't ask properly hence I bought the Monty Python Tee Shirt with "I'm Not Dead Yet!" on it.  

Oh well. lets' see what car crash the Chancellor gets herself into today.  Apparently everything is great and we are "Going For Growth" so that's alright then.  The figures don't show that and the markets may not totally agree with her either.  Most of us just want to put two fingers up and express our indignation that we ended up with half the North Korean Communist Party governing us.

Incentives And Behaviour

 I recall one of the discussions we had years back was about the law of unintended consequences and how people behave when incentivised to do so and how, if these behaviours are not thoroughly thought through and tested then there are problems.

The Cobra problem in British controlled India was a case in point.  These snakes were seen as a problem and a bounty was placed on the head of each snake delivered to the authorities.  It was proposed that this would incentivise the population to assist in getting rid of these snakes.  What happened was that there were a lot more snakes than the British realised but in fact the bottom lie was that the locals were breeding them so as to make income from the snake bounty.  It happens in industry quite often as well as in local and big government too.

When a target is placed on a service a KPI it prioritises that service to deal with the target and perhaps not something else in the system.  I complained to my boss many times that every quarter (for we were a US based company) that they'd change the goalposts, they'd tell us to do something different.  Go for Revenue, Go for Profit, Go for Cash Flow, go for Sales and so on.  You probably get the picture.  My complaint was that I'd got my 120 strong staff to concentrate on one thing and it takes a while to turn a ship, communicate the changes, advise the customers and put training in place and 3 months and the next quarter came and I'd have to do it all again but for some other metric.  The hideous costs involved in changing these directives came at the cost of productivity and no one really knowing what they were meant to be doing.  

There was, I complained, a lot of change for changes sake and then there would be the disappointing quarterly figures to deal with.  You know, Revenue is down we need to concentrate on revenue, Oh now profits are down so we need to concentrate on profits and around we went.  Linked to these goals were behaviours and targets and everyone wanted to get their bonus and so they did these targeted things.  Often the targets were at odds with the outcomes but we incentivised people to achieve these and once they did, we would be obliged to pay them no matter what internal or external damage these had caused.

I was amused to see that it happens today in a strange round about way.  The government of the day cannot fathom why despite saying they are going for growth that it isn't happening.  The PM states that the measures are working and we are seeing the green shoots of a turn around.  Absolutely delusional along with his feckless Deputy and Chancellor.  There's no incentive to work any harder because you get taxed more, people aren't stupid and why should they do anything when there is no incentive to better oneself.  I looked at the Tax on dividends and Capital Gains and the limits on these have shrunk to limits where you are going to get taxed for having just a few hundred pounds coming in.  

It's not worth working extra time for, it's not worth making more money than the Tax thresholds because the system is unfair and fully garnered against you.  If you run a business, the corporation tax is up, business rates are up and if your employ someone you are walking into a new minefield of regulation and higher employment taxes.  You can't sustain any of it and if you want to change behaviour you must make it worthwhile.  People are fed up of their money being wasted, given away and being handled by incompetent ideologues who don't care and cannot see that their actions are causing great anxiety and stress as well as impoverishing the very people they say that they are elected to represent.

At the moment they seem to think that all is well in their world and despite people yelling at them to change course and to wake up and smell the coffee (well it's brown and doesn't smell like any coffee I've tasted) they are happily full steam into the Iceberg of economic ruin.  How any of them have kept their jobs I don't know.  Time will tell I suppose but they've certainly chosen poorly and made people very wary about spending money and many are concerned for their jobs and welfare.  

Can't Get Away From All This Doom And Gloom

 It's a case of new day new f**k up by someone or other in the government.  Today it's more grabs on dead people's estates from the thieving bastards.  Essentially the way they implement taxes it's downright theft and bayoneting the wounded and dead bodies after the battle is the low stooped to by this feckless bunch of politicians.  

Councils are declaring a 114 so that they can charge way more than they were allowed to under the law.  Some of these are looking to charge 15% or more.  Councils are charging us more but delivering us less and less.  I see no improvements to services and all I do see is our money spunked away on traffic schemes that didn't work and needed to be changed back again.  Costly gold plated pensions schemes and of course there's always plenty of money to spend on DEI and wokery too.  

The County council are delaying our right to vote and want to become a unitary council which is ridiculous considering how large our county actually is.  There's mounting anger with it all and I hope that it will end very badly for the main political parties.  I fear the country will go to the dogs to start with but somehow this has all got to end.  I said before about the tail wagging the dog and the 1% or 2% makes so much noise that they get their way when the vast majority do not.  It's time to change it and make this nonsense go away.  

When they started to ease discipline in school and then forced the unruly kids to stay on dragging down the good ones it was as if they wanted everyone to be dumbed down. I can understand that dumb and stupid are excellent qualifications for a politician but not for many of us who held responsible jobs.  If I didn't do my job correctly people could have died.  Do you think that being a dumb fool would be a defence in that case?

I knew this government would be bad but they are really going to town with the complete lack of direction, planning or coherent policies.  I imagine that they are only given crayons to write with in case they injure themselves.   That's is they haven't banned buying crayons from Amazon this morning!  Believe me, that wouldn't surprise me in the nanny shut the stable door after the horse has bolted world they frequent.  The deflection and misdirection going on is pathetic, childlike and so obvious that even stupid people can see through it and call it out.  It's like listening to a class load of prepubescent 12 year olds arguing over who their favourite pop star is and then when called to order by the teacher explain that they were discussing the subject they were meant to be studying.

I watch as they stagger from one f**k up to another, stumbling over the rotten corpse of the last lie they told and digging themselves every deeper into a pit of lies.  Painting themselves into a corner of moral ineptitude and financial naiveity that is almost beyond belief.  It's like a kid who can't add up being given £20 pocket money and being let loose in a gaming shop.  It will all end in tears when the sums don't add up.

Reminds me of one of the phrases on my desk that I used to say was about me "His men would follow him anywhere, mainly out of curiosity"  

Ronald Reagan Summed It Up

 When he said 

"I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

He's right.  Our lot are totally pathetic, lying bunch of turds I've ever seen and I can't be alone in thinking this.  Polls suggest that most people think these people lie all the time and that they are inept.

Working on a "Don't fix it if it ain't broken" would be a start but every Minister wants to "put their mark" on their portfolio which is why Health, Education, Transport and most things are FUBB, f****d up beyond belief!  

Hidden in Bills are snooping on your bank account for Pensioners.  Idiots who think that a Pension paid in all my life by me into the system is a "benefit" when it is an ENTITLEMENT!! Who the hell puts these imbeciles in charge (I know that we vote but we have no say over the lack of grey cells these people display).  Once again, they lie, they hide information and they overreach their powers. 

Of course, I attempt to do my bit in contacting elected representatives but to little or no avail.  This intrusion into our bank accounts as Pensioners is once again, beyond the need to do so.  If the system was fair in the first place there probably wouldn't be a need for this.  But successive Governments and civil servants have tinkered and  fiddled with the system making it horrendously complex and with it full of holes and on top of that it is administered by people more interested in rainbow coloured flags than helping the people that need it and not always getting it right and I've seen too much of this where people are badly advised and then punished because the Government Department made the mistake in interpreting the complex system and they then have to suffer the consequences of it.

I wonder if the British, who are generally known for the tolerance, will eventually reach the limit of that toleration of these ne'er-do-wells. It's brewing under and the polls show are distinct shift to the right and if things go as badly as I am expecting, there will be a lot of discontent coming.  It's all pain and no gain at present.  Finally the people begin to see through the myopic ideology of these policies that are there to make others richer at our expense and do absolutely nothing for us.  They appear to have lost the very reason they say they are in Government and as sleep Joe Public starts to wake up from a bad dream they find themselves in a living nightmare.  

Bills have all but doubled since 2020 and no one complains and no one appears to have looked at that and said hold on, by shutting the country (and the world) down against all previous experience and knowledge causing a financial catastrophe, printing their way out, having zero interest rates etc etc etc what did you expect to happen?  I wrote to my MP at the time and suggested that not only did I not expect to live in a North Korean regime but that it would lead to employment and financial woes.  It did for me it killed off my business (not the first time that politicians have done that to me).

Add to that this present set of shackling tax rises and you've got the makings of a third world economy.  And our idiots think closer ties with Europe which is going down the toilet faster than we are (just look at Germany and France's economic figures) and you've got all our Captains of Politics going down with the same boat.

The disaster is just appearing on the horizon and it's time for some smart work by the politicians but I don't think that smart is in their tool box but there's plenty of dumb, stupid, naive, incompetent, thick and similar in there, almost an unlimited supply from what I see. 

Because no one trusts these people and we see through their lies and how generally incompetent they really are, they hold no real authority with many people.  I ignore them, will not watch them or listen to them and only enjoy their gaffs and hearing about their car crash interviews and policies. They were an angry mob in opposition but now they govern they are an incoherent blob of failed promises, blatant in your face lies and they demonstrate a complete lack of a plan, coherent joined up thinking or indeed any shame or humility.

I do hope they rot in hell.  Those in society who are weak and frail, those who need a government to look after them have been deserted and thrown to the wolves.  I'm not sure if this is accurate but we have to look to the dark days of the 1930s where it was Hitler's management style to not give written orders and therefore ministers were not entirely sure of their portfolios and these overlapped and whilst they were busy politically fighting each other.

Here we have a lack of a plan, I think they didn't expect to take power in the way they did but that's a problem with our voting system as they polled less than 30% but have a huge majority.  What little they said has been reversed out of, all the promises have been broken in 6 or is it 7 months.  They appear to be working a s a set of individuals and not a joined up government.  The Net Zero religion is spending money on something that will never give a return and that is trying to use untested, unproven technology £20BN worth mind you.  They are building an AI data-centre ready in 6 years but our energy costs are too expensive for anyone to invest in it.  They go to places like Iceland where they have geothermal almost free energy supplies and plenty of it.  

No one works out the feasibility of there grand plans and designs.  EVs no one can afford them or the losses involved in owning them and the electricity to charge them can't be built in time for their 2030 target.  We know that, how come they don't we will all be taxed so hard that none of us can afford a car anyway.  Stifling everything is hardly joined up policy and looking west will only exacerbate the problems.  

Oh well, other than that, everything's fine of course!

Looking Back Is It Healthy?

 Eleven years ago I moved out of the martial home and into a house share with my friend.  We were both leaving our wives and needed an interim pied-à-terre.  It was a nice house a bit barren as I moved in with some stuff - just enough and then went and got some from the house and put the rest in storage (a bad move in some ways stuff got rusty etc).  Anyhow that was what happened.  Some years before that on the same day I'd had another operation that proved clear - there were a few of those too but better safe than sorry and hey, I'm still here!

It got me to wondering whether looking back is a good thing, is it reaffirming, useful or am I being romantically nostalgic?  Were things better then or are they now?  Are we ever "satisfied with our lot"?  Recently a number of people I haven't spoken to in 40 year or possibly 50 years have been chatting in a Facebook group and connecting and whilst that's nice, it presents us all with these pictures of the past with photos of how we are now!  I wrote a post a few days ago about how beautiful we were in our youth but we probably didn't know or realise it.  We are still beautiful and we are probably able to reflect on that fact a bit more in a retrospective way through our children and grandchildren maybe.

Getting old isn't a lot of fun.  Eyesight, Hearing, ailments, bits wearing out and today I feel cold my fingers and my back too.  It's nature of course and it's inevitable that this will happen and in some ways when you do look back you see how physically fit you were, how active and how much stamina you had.  I worked hard and did overtime, then travelled for sometimes over an hour to get home then had a quick bite to eat and then did a few hours work on the house.  When I had time off I (and me ex) looked after a huge garden, did DIY around the house, repaired things, made wine, jam and the like with the garden produce and held down jobs.  These days talking to youngsters they ware always tired and don't do much when they get home apart from Netflix.  Geez, we worked like crazy but there you go things change.  I'd like half of my energy and stamina back :-) 

It's the problem of getting old and suddenly you are confronted with the problems of lifting heavy boxes and doing any heavy work just wears you out and that's annoying.  You cannot help but look back and remember how fit you were.

The past has gone, no need to worry about it is something that I do now as I no longer beat myself up about it but I am writing a biography and I find that it is interesting to look back and reminisce about those "good times" for the bad times do fade I find.  The trouble is that I can still be dragged mentally into the point where 11 years ago I left my old house for the last time and up to a point I was happy there.  That if I had done something differently some other outcome may have occurred and of course, it didn't and it doesn't matter but the little voice in your head tries to take the thoughts over.

Looking back is OK but I need to firmly root myself here in the present or my mind will start to go back to its tortured state it was in 10 or more years ago!

Lipstick On A Pig

 This came to mind thinking about what is going on today in the UK.  There's an abhorrent crime but wee are told that it isn't terror related despite what we have been shown.  Not my call but along with many others we blink in the bright sunlight of once again finding out that we haven't been told the whole truth in fact we've been obfuscated, yet again.  Politicians and "the authorities" seem to deliberately do this and for what purpose?  Are we not sufficiently mature to hear the facts, are we afraid that we will inflict hurty feelings?  

The bottom line is that they aren't very good at lying to us and they do so for the wrong reasons so as not to offend anyone and yet the offend my intelligence and that of the vast majority of us.  Once again, they try and protect the 1% of people who are offended by absolutely everything and want the 99% to do what they want, bow to their medieval hatred and backward ways.  I for one am fed up with it all and want them to GIVE IT A F***KING REST! 

This heinous crime and life sentence were greeted by a commentator as if there was going to be a race riot.  Why did he even think that was the case?  Finally we saw this monster for what he was, a snivelling coward and then I've got someone spouting off to me that diversity is our strength.  It's got nothing to do with that and your stupid silly conclusion that we think like that.  What's annoyed everyone is the lack of action from the authorities because of that very problem, treading on egg shells, unwilling to upset a tiny minority of the population who do not hold the values of this country and its people at their hearts and so want to impose a version of their stupid self image onto us.  

I kind of don't care who you are, what your religion is, what you identify as as long as you go about it in your own quiet way, like I do, like my fellow citizens do.  But OH NO, you can't be doing that, you want us to bend to your backward, medieval, insane vision of a world where you take centre stage, are offended by everything, read insults into every word we say to you and think that it's ALL ABOUT YOU.  About time we got a grip but our politicians are feckless parodies, inept is too high up the stupid order for the vast majority of them.  Politicians who think that the war in Ukraine is about slavery, who cannot think strategically, who don't understand economics, global impacts and who have no idea of the appliance of good science.

If anything, the inconsistencies of the way they govern and the way they talk down to the public is a measure of how they treat us all with contempt and just want to rinse us for money without actually delivering anything of value.  Damaged goods, not fit for purpose, totally inept Pigs with Lipstick.  

Treat us with some level of intelligence.  Don't talk down to us and don't think you are our lords and masters.  As always, I try telling people that these are our servants not the other way around.  They were voted in to do our will but like them all, they totally p1ss on us and tell us it's raining.  

Old "Let me make it clear" and his party are a laughing stock not just here but wider in the world. No invite to the Inauguration for any of them tells you a lot.  No speaking part at Davos should also tell you a bit more.  The loss of over 10,000 millionaires who've moved to the UAE, Singapore, USA, Canada (God knows why you'd go there) and other such places tells you all you need to know about the UK right now.  Coming down the track of the high speed crash (although it will appear to be slow motion) are a series of economy damaging events.  They happen on a daily basis.  Supermarkets are culling staff, businesses that have been around a long time are going into Administration, recruitment has slowed as if an emergency brake has been applied.  Prices continue to go up and I have seen my energy bills and food bills I'd say double in 5 years and I think that more pain is on the way.

I have to laugh when you see their haunted faces and the slow realisation that perhaps something isn't right with country.  They are getting sh1t from all sides, no one wants to know them, they aren't a cohesive unit and do stupid things and say even stupider things and dig themselves into a hole.  Competent is not a word that can be used for any of them really, they've never had a job in industry or diplomacy or anything useful, it's like being governed by the loud mouthed kids in the sixth form who know everything about anything but haven't left home and gone to earn a living yet.  Whose only experiences of life have been gathered from brief encounters behind the bike sheds, a cigarette shared and drinking p1ss weak lager from a tin!  

Why we tolerate such imbeciles running the country and poisoning minds with double speak and frankly race baiting rhetoric I have no idea.  Surely we look on "Let me be clear Kier" and shake our heads in disbelief that he appears to have no grasp on the reality of the situation, the mood of the nation and how he seems to blame anyone else but himself and his policies for the situation we are in.  His and his parties stock answer to legitimate questions is to parrot out in his Dalek voice that we are all far right or some such thing.  Look into that man's history and you'll see that everyone you know is far right compared to his political beliefs and his past political affiliations.  Poor old Jeremy Corbyn is further right of two tier Kier.

I think that there is a ground swell of anger that should not be ignored.  I cannot take any one of them seriously and they are minnows in a big pond of big fish.  They are getting cut down to size and their authority eroded each passing day.  I wish the great majority of the UK public start to see through this veneer and also start to understand the propaganda that we are subjected to daily by well meaning, well intentioned but utterly bereft of scientific or logical substance behind it.  Parroted out multiple times a day sh1t like climate change, carbon emissions, EVs, renewables blah blah blah.  You are told what to think and how to think, programmed by the BBC and state media and yet if you just scratch beneath the surface and so basic research you'll find that all is not as it should be "Something is rotten in the State of Denmark". 

It's easy folks.  Look up what a Renewable Windmills is made up of, how much energy it takes to make and which parts are actually "renewable" and then add up the costs, work out the rating and the efficacy and just see that if you are worried about carbon (dioxide) then plant a few trees, job done.  Don't conflate pollution with emissions.  Don't believe that things are getting worse when in fact they are getting better.  Think there are more hurricanes and wild fires and disasters?  Go look at the people that would be hit in their pockets if it were so.  Go look at the insurance payouts.  As a rule of thumb, follow the money - ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY as it will lead you to all truth.  Remember who gets poorer and who gets richer from these clean energy schemes and in which way does the money and taxes flow?  

I love being lectured by people who tell me that they are saving the planet and they probably feel quite righteous that so much of their household income now goes on green stuff and taxes.  And, they want more of it.  Less plastic, organic, plant based, blah blah.  A fool and his money are soon parted.

Anyway, that's enough for today.  Remember taxes are good, Ukraine needs to be freed from slavery? We should pay lots more money for stuff that doesn't actually work and that aren't renewable, believe everything you hear, diversity is our strength, make everyone poor and stop complaining.  I think that will do as my mantra going forward. 

Zero Empathy

That's me apparently although I'd suggest that's not quite zero but pretty close.  It's not that I don't have feelings but I don't react the way people expect me to.

If someone dies here then I am sad about it but it doesn't really upset me.  I was sad that my dad had died and in the way he did and I had one night of watching a couple of films and having a scotch or three and that was it really.  I had to tell the girls and it was my birthday the next day and so I had to be OK for that.  We raised a glass for dad and then it was pretty much business as usual.  By that I mean, I went up and spent a week with my mum sorting out all the arrangements and wrote the eulogy, argued with my brother who wanted a Requiem Mass type funeral when my father was at best tolerant of religion.  I needed to explain that it wasn't his funeral (or his guilt in reality) but our dad's funeral and he would want anything fussy and certainly not all this religious guff my brother wanted.  He can have that for his own funeral.

I don't have much empathy with politicians (as you know) and my fellow creatures here in the UK seem to be posting drivel again and sympathising with those being deported from the US and so on.  I doubt they get their news from anywhere other than the Guardian or the BBC to post such trite stuff so they don't get the time of day either.

Stuff 3,000 miles away might be shocking to these people but they don't appear shocked by the goings on in our own country and are deranged when it comes to Trump and do not appear to actually investigate what is actually going on and what mandate he has.  We have a Dalek in charge here who does nothing other than p1ss me off every time he or his robot ministers speak.  They think that by saying something, it automatically happens somehow, by magic perhaps?  We should perhaps be worried about our own predicament first  rather than the land of the free 3,000 miles away from us.  So once again, zero empathy , some incredulity and some anger but I don't care what happens to them.

Back to death and I see that making objects out of the clothes of your dead relative is a thing?  So you hand over some stuff and they make a teddy bear or some such thing.  I have a small handful of things that were my father's and a few things from my grandparents.  Other than that, I don't have my children's baby shoes, first toys or any such thing.  What's the point?  They go in a shoe box, get put in a cupboard and forgotten about and when you die someone clearing out your cupboard throws them away unless maybe it's your kids and they keep them LOL.

INTJs are built differently and so whilst there is some emotion it quickly gives way to ongoing practicality and just getting on with your own life.  2025 has been bad so far with three deaths in three weeks.  It's the time of year of course and the older you get the more these appear closer to you.  

Look With Envy To The West

I find it curious that we in the UK are fed US news in a way that makes us fear the New President and are certain, from our backward third world country that the citizens of the US voted incorrectly!  How can we throw stones in our metaphorical glass house as we have Mr. Charisma himself running our country into the ground like a WW2 Zero Pilot he picks up speed each day until the aircraft is exploded onto the crowd of tax payers, many thinking he is doing a good job!

It's not in our gift to work out how the US should conduct itself.  From my humble one voice in a million I hope that the US leads the way in breaking us all from our slumbers.  Dream walking into Net Zero, a guess to two decimal places from a computer model not real data.  Made to destroy our businesses and our lives because we can't allow ourselves to be independent we must take our orders from zealots and financial institutions.  F**k the people, tough luck to us who have seen our bills double in 5 years and our ability to earn enough money to pay for the doubled bills halved, tax burden massively increased to 70% and for what?

No the US is leading the way and the wishy washy liberals can cry as much as they like but enough is enough and all of this regressive draconian weight of tolerance (which is nothing but tolerant).  This dressed up confection of debauchery and tail wagging dog policies that benefits 1% to the detriment of the 99% needed to stop and from the top down.  You don't want this stuff sorted out at bottom up level for there will be a bad outcome from that.

No matter how "good" you think you are being, no matter how "kind" you think your policies are, they result in inequality and despair, punishment for the innocent and praise and high honours for the wrong doers in society.  That's why I look to the west with some envy for they have finally woke up from their slumbers and their false societal experiment, found it benefits few and punishes the many who pay for this nonsense.  I hope that they lead the way a beacon to us and we feel the heat of their changes and melt our political system, our corrupt, think, stupid, politicians and we ourselves change this unfair society thrust against our will on us.   

It doesn't take much to peel away the veneer of politically corrupt damaging policy to comprehend the damage it does to us for virtue signalling, lack of joined up thinking and crazy directions that destroy economies and lay us open to security issues in food, transport and unwanted attention from anyone from a medieval backward thinking, full of hatred external country.  Politicians lose sight of such things until it is too late.  Let us watch and learn how to move this all forward and to that we actually need to thank our US cousins for voting the way they did.

You may think all of this is nonsense but it's OK 'cos Joe Biden pardoned me for  writing cruel hurty words like this! 

Opticians Why So Expensive?

 Well apart from the delay to my appointment meaning I had to extend my car parking it all went rather well.  Getting old and failing eye sight and hearing and general health - it's not fun is it?

But, as it goes, one of my eyes has improved slightly and there's no major problems excepting the start of a cataract forming slowly in one eye - not please about that but it is what it is I guess.

My prescription has hardly changed but my glasses are 4 years old now and I have a small crack where I dropped them on Christmas Day - the oven surprised me with a huge gust of vapour as I opened it and my glasses fell to the floor and a small hairline crack by the lens screw has appeared. So I saw a couple of frames I liked and we quickly put together the cost for them.  Little change out of £600.  So I went to my previous online supplier and got them for £150!  Yes - why are the shops so expensive?  

Our PM has been on TV "addressing the nation" luckily I didn't watch the Dalek and of course, he just spouts lies and deflects the criticisms back at us "far right bigoted voters"  - The car crash is still happening in slow motion and these cretinous politicians have nowhere to hide now.  Their true colours are coming into view and maybe the rest of the population might wake up and smell the coffee.

I doubt it sometimes though judging by the adverts on Facebook this week someone is selling LPs and asking a lot for them.  Of course, these aren't rare LPs but some of the most well known of all time - the ones that were at the top of the charts for a year or more and sold multiple millions of copies in this country alone let alone the millions around the world.  So in reality they aren't worth that mush as there is no rarity value or scarcity about them, things that would command high prices.

We had the water tank replaced yesterday a mains water pressurised tank and it really has made a difference to the pressure of the water both hot and cold and the hot water now flows properly and isn't a dribble out of the taps and better than that - it's hot all the time.  It was a bit of a shock paying the bill this morning but it should last 25 years they say so fingers crossed it does that.

We Were Beautiful Weren't we?

 An old friend posted a photo of us when we were at school about 50 years ago.  We were the first sixth form to be mixed from the boys and girls schools and we are standing outside of our form room on our last day.  Excited to be leaving school and for our lives ahead and as I looked on the images I realised that we were all beautiful.  We were young adults just growing up fast and there were the girls that I successfully and unsuccessfully courted back in those days and how shy we were and not quite worldly wise at all.  

We weren't cynical, we all enjoyed ourselves and we had no real worries other than would we pass our exams, get the jobs we wanted and have enough money to go down the pub next week.

But oh God, we were beautiful and we didn't realise it at all did we?  With the wisdom of age comes the appreciation of our youth and it is a shame we didn't realise it back then.  There's photos of us all skinny as rakes, healthy bodies, on trips to the coast, camping, having fun and they were great times and memories were made and that photo brought it all back to me. 

We are beautiful now of course but in subtly different ways I'd say.  The only thing I tend to concern myself with is that the utter corruption of our political system has made me a big cynic but I do need to work on getting back to being present, in the now, appreciate and enjoy what is there to be enjoyed and to ignore the killjoys and hypocritical tyrants we now have here.   Let's hope Trump releases a small earthquake here for our Muppet politicians.  

I'd never have thought, when I was 16 or 17 that I could describe my school friends as beautiful but the photo just made me feel and think that way.