Good Grief

Sorry, we've somewhat deviated from Bladder Cancer so let's get back on track a bit.

It's been 2 or 3 years since I was discharged after some 17 years of treatments and reviews.  So let's review where we are:

1. I'm not dead yet!  Yes, I survived and I lived to tell the tale.  My "I'm Not Dead Tee Shirt" is still around, still fits but is looking a bit faded now.
2. It's mentally and physically debilitating - I doubt that even now I'm fully over it mentally or physically but I am still here, still living life but not my best life.  I need to do that. 
3. I'm getting my weight back down - I ate and drank far too much and lock down didn't help
4.  I am a totally different person than I was.  I'm actually more tolerant than I used to be (that may surprise you reading my posts).  I don't get so worked up about things now, they will be what they will be and I cannot change what is happening.
5. I don't overthink situations anymore and whilst I'll not break out of the way I work and think, at least I'm not in the situation where my mind is buzzing and calculating all the time.
6. I still find myself wasting time at this PC and procrastinating too. 

So I think that clearly it's survivable and you can work your way through it.  It took longer and perhaps 7 years longer to get discharged but they were keeping their eye on me so I suppose it isn't too bad apart from the extra operations (that were not necessary but you never know).

I feel that I am a little ungrateful for the extra life I've been given and that needs to change.  The biggest rut you have to get over is the rut you are in of course.

Leadership

When your "elected" leader tells you it's all doom and gloom and troubled times are ahead after having told you about the bright sunlit uplands in his clamour to be elected you might well feel, like I do, that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark?"

If you wanted someone to lead you into battle or inspire you, this Prime Minister is not the one.  The lies and downright bare faced bollocks that he and his party have started coming out with just a month or so into their tenure bodes badly for our future.  Very badly and some of the things they want to bring in will cripple the country and destroy the will to work or do anything, why should you work for someone else's benefit and not your own?  Why should you pay crippling taxes and see no benefit yourself.  Imagine if you will that they state there is a huge gaping hole in the budget to the tune of £20BN and yet they gave away £11BN so they can save the planet.  Imagine that they haven't even looked at the huge amount spent on vanity projects, millions goes to waste on studies to prove that Shakespeare didn't write for the LQBTQ+-=£$%& community.  I could have told you that for a few quid.

There's no leadership at all, this downtrodden, glass half empty PM has no idea how to inspire us, to say what needs to be done and he appears to have no ideas at all.  Like a Bullrush in the wind he blows hither and thither not knowing which way to point and grow in.  It's all looking grim and the anger is growing, the criticism too is mounting.  What they say and what they do are almost completely the opposite, people can see it for themselves and the trust (if there ever was any) in them is being destroyed one lie at a time.  You don't need to be a Rocket Scientist to know how things are going.  The race to the bottom is almost there and this lot will reach the bottom and then accelerate and dig down even further.

I don't know too many people who take this clown seriously anymore.  We need leadership out of the sh1t storm we are currently in and there's no politician that isn't to blame for the mess we are in.  But we've got Mr Blancmange in charge, woe betides us!

Nanny State

 Already sick to death of these incompetent no nothing politicians.  They haven't a clue and they are absolutely despised and just don't seem to know it yet.  I'd say they probably have no idea what they are up against and they look like animals caught in the rushing headlights of an oncoming vehicle.  They wanted "power" and now they've got i, you can see they don't know what to do with it.

They are spending money like water and want us to pay for it, they are doing really stupid things, LTNs, no smoking outside pubs FFS - and I'm an ex-smoker and find that ridiculous.  They are focusing on jailing people for hurty words and seem to be dealing in different ways with serious crime.  There's photo evidence of the Police, for example, walking past someone doing Nitrous Oxide in plain view.  There's rightly prison time for extremist thugs and violence but again it seems as if it is being handled very badly and the press aren't really helping their cause.

They have spent so much money on continue to do so on vanity projects expecting us to suffer the tax to cover it.  Honestly, when you see the money being pumped into projects that have no good outcome for normal regular people you can see that they've already lost their way and the people just think rightly so that they are a bunch of liars, cheats, chancers (for sure), ignorant, nose in the trough politicians.  They say they have a £20 Bn black hole in the accounts.  They spend half a billion a day on the NHS probably more now so in 40 days we'd get that back!  They pumped £11 Bn into reparations for Climate Change!  The spend on vanity projects is likewise huge and there's no benefit to us at all.

The energy price cap has gone up 10% and due another 3% in January and it's doubled in 4 or 5 years but that's not their fault.  It's our apparently.  There some magic secret force out there called the Far Right.  When you boil it down., there is no such thing, there's concerned citizens who have livelihoods to look after, mouths to feed, mortgages and bills to pay and they are being sold how under control the economy is and yet these inflation busting energy prices, fines to use your car, and food prices increasing alarmingly - they say it's a few percent inflation but they don't truly see the cost in their closeted high castle. 

You can feel the anger and the disappointment in the utterly wet "leadership" this guy brings.  He's already lied to us three or four times and the Internet does not forget and the promises he made just a few months ago are shattered and broken, smashed in our faces.   "I'll look after the Pensioners"  Well he's taken £300 off of them and raised the costs of heating for us all.  

I am not sure how long he will last as he appears to have underestimated what it takes to be PM of this country he brings nothing to the table and all they can do is Nanny us in what you can and can't do.

LEAVE ME ALONE you bastards.  Stop telling me what I can and cannot do.  Run the country for us (which is after all what you were voted in to do).  But no. you just want to interfere and make things worse.

Ronald Reagan said that the most frightening words you could ever hear were "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help you!" 

Use of words

 I've said it before that the use of our language by modern news media outlets and indeed many people is to use exaggeration and inference.

Let's take that someone "thought about doing something"  I won't repeat the headline here as it's bollox frankly.  It is written in such a way as if someone actually did something they were thinking about.   I think about lots of things but hardly any get off of my inner head drawing table in to real life action because I am a rational person.  I may think lots of things that are stupid, and wrong but that's my head sifting through hundreds of options and outcomes.  Generally, the more absurd ideas are cast away but at least they were put in the melting pot and churned over for benefits and outcomes.

 If the SMS had their way we'd have to believe that someone who "thought" something had actually done it or "thought" about doing it. So outlandish was this suggestion that some "thought" that a whole headline was created as if it had actually happened and the person doing the "thinking" was vilified.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that language is bent and manipulated to assert a particular point of view.  Anything but the truth or two sides to a story to let you consider the facts and make a decision.  It doesn't work like that these days, you are told what to think and you must not question your elders and betters now must you?

The way things are reported is very interesting in that huge violent protests can be described as "mainly peaceful" that Illegal Aliens are Irregular immigrants.  The list goes on like "Birthing persons" WTF is that?  I enjoy pulling apart these TV and radio reports as they say the most bizarre things and dance around subjects that actually, because of their impact on society need to be aired and discussed and not buried behind some sort of "group speak"  If you dress a turd up in a tutu, it's still a turd.  

Then we have missing out data (written about in the past few days) and inferring that something is a disaster and has never happened before when 10 minutes research will show you otherwise.  Try wildfires as an example.  They'll have you believe the situation is getting worse and yet go back a hundred years and see what sort of wildfires were around then and you'd be very surprised at how wildfires are in fact burning less acreage than then.  I'd also infer that man is not helping and needs to implement firebreaks and to remove dead brush from below the trees too but hey, what do I know.  The scorching temperatures, record breaking apparently aren't in fact abnormal at all, again go back and look at newspapers of the 1930s and see what sort of heatwaves were around then.

I don't know at what point everyone will just ignore or better still ridicule these MSM types?  It's blatant and yet people seem to buy this narrative.  You can see that nothing improves, that lessons are very rarely actually learned - every Politician and Leader says after a disaster that "lessons will be learned" like hell they will all the top people get paid off with staggering pension pots and golden handshakes leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and if you've been particularly stupid you'll probably get a Knight or Dame hood.....

 The PM talking yesterday appeared to blame us, the Citizens of this country for the reprehensible way we had let the country down over the past xx years.  Not the politicians voted and trusted to run the place on our behalves.  It's our fault and we must be punished.  I'm not sure how the public will react to what comes next?  There will be crazy tax pain for lots of people and with a government who have been in power for less than two months now, their rating is through the floor and negative.  That takes some doing I'd suggest.

They too  use weasel words and are currently caught in the headlights as they don't actually appear to be handling things well and it looks as if their only answer is to rob us all of our pensions, savings and increase our taxes none of which I can see as vote winning ways forward.  Oh well, let's see what happens when people get angry which I imagine they will do when the next set of crackpot ideas draining the treasury come out.   As usual with Socialists they are going to say that they will tax the rich for the benefit of the poor.  Frankly they are probably doing the diametrical opposite.  The poor look like they will be taxed heavily.  If you rob Peter to pay Paul you will always get Paul's vote.  

They Are Exactly The Thing They Accuse You Of Being

 When you get accused of being, I don't know, let's say "Denier" it doesn't actually do anything but shut you down from having your own opinion or stance on any particular subject.  We hear "Far right", "racist" and so on bandied around these days without any real understanding or sense.

You see these people have no real argument or data or evidence but they do have a complete belief in the misguided idea that they are right on, well, just about everything.  If you can stop them from yelling at you or closing you down with the above statements you can actually destroy their stance and that's why they close you down.

They are all for freedom of speech and expression as long as it is their freedom of speech and expression and not someone else's.  Such is today's entitled mob culture.  The hypocrisy of the woke and their unwillingness to listen and learn also does them no favours.  In yelling at me that I am a denier they deny me the right to an opinion and turn out to be the very thing that they accuse you of. 

"Test Prove", "Studies indicate", "Scientists state" and so on when challenged you find that they do no such thing.  So much "science" is modelled by computer these days and then read out as fact and paraded as conclusive proof that something is as they believe it to be.  "The science is settled" is another shut you down phrase.  Ask a proper scientist if this is so?  Of course it isn't, science is never settled.  One of my heroes if we are allowed to have them is Richard Feynman and he explained things in simple easy to understand language.  One of my favourites is:

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."

And another:

"If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong."

And there, dear reader is the crux of the matter.  If you cannot replicate the theorem it's wrong. If you cannot prove what you are saying, it's wrong.  No matter how loudly you shut me down and yell at me, you're wrong.  If you cannot argue your case and put it simply and elegantly backed by facts (not modelled fiction) you are wrong.  I've had 50 years of this and it is worse now than it was 40 or 50 years ago as we didn't have these cults of "science" to deal with.  Now a person gains their knowledge from Social Media and places like the BBC who are not fact based anymore and push a line that allows no challenges and you are not at liberty to have your own view beyond that of the State Broadcaster.

Look at the people they bring on to TV as "experts"  in one case an Autistic Truant Child is brought on to argue climate change.  Not with any scientific knowledge, she hardly attended school, but by having a set of angry keywords about destroying the planet and how it was our fault.  Then you get pressure groups portrayed as experts.  If my living and purpose was to protect Ants for a living I'd be fighting tooth and Nail for your attention and more importantly your patronage and so I'd be able to make up all sorts of information to secure more funding and a space at the trough in the pigsty.

You see it more and more, and I ask where do you get your information from?  These days you can get Academic papers and review them, you can get facts and analyse them, you can see what "tricks" people get up to when demonstrating their side of an argument and if you use logic and a bit of maths you can see right through what is going on but people don't, they are either lazy or indoctrinated that surely "no one would lie to me" 

Take words you hear on fact based programmes.  Something has declined by 70%  OK, so show me the starting point, what actual numbers are we discussing here?  Who conducted the experiment, was it a controlled experiment was it UK wide or just in one location and extrapolated?  My OH is fed up with me questioning the data.  Then there's could, possibly, might used in a scientific way?  Something could happen, might happen and so on.

There was a programme about the Lynton and Boscastle floods the other night.  Both huge natural disasters.  Both have happened before.  The words built of the flood plain and once in 400 years event were then succeeded by Global Warming......  Now, hold on, if this has happened before and around the 1600s then I don't know about you but there certainly weren't any SUVs around at the time and CO2 was about 300 ppm not the 420 ppm we have now so what caused it?  

A recent nature programme shows Walruses jumping to their deaths off a cliff "committing suicide" due to Global Warming.  Later it was noted that a pack of Polar Bears were hunting and like they normally did they drove the poor beasts of a cliff and then feasted on them!  

The "facts" that people get are generally for the purpose of click bait and sensationalizing things to sell newspapers and generate traffic to the TV channel etc. 

Being fact checked by someone who uses headlines and then closes you down used to be a great sport of mine back in the day.  I could wipe you out with facts but these days its best just to steer clear of these people as they neither listen nor comprehend what you say to them, they don't do any research or any analysis and use ridiculous techniques such as yelling insults to get their points across!  

They are exactly the thing the accuse you of!  

So Stop Spending OUR Money Like Water

 Successive Governments do this but this lot are now saying how terrible it is, how there's no money, difficult choices need to be made etc.  They've just spunked billions away in settling public sector pay, stealing money off of Pensioners and giving it away to countries who in some cases have their own space race!  Billions and Billions are lost in fraud and failed projects, filling black holes in failed nationalised businesses and then to kick the sh1t out of us you have to pay more to drive in London and they're going for more fines and tolls.  WHo has to pay?  We do.

I'm not sure that "the people" are going to be that happy about this.  Things are going up, stupid decisions are being made daily, our money is just being poured away and the people mismanaging it are asking us to continue to pay for their f**k ups.  The bare faced hypocrisy of these useless below contempt lowlifes.  The energy price cap has gone up 10% thanks to "green initiatives" cutting off our own supplies of energy and importing it from abroad - what could possibly go wrong.  Our local council has imposed car parking charges even at Bank Holidays and Sunday and now into the evening and good grief, heavens above, the leader of the council's own ward have free car parking.  So I don't go to where those charges are.  The pressure now goes onto the local shops who will see even more decreased footfall as they have been reporting for years now and since the pandemic measures, what did they think was going to happen?  I got fed up of stating that if you shut things down and people got used to being at home, death will come to those local industries where on top of having to actually go to the shops instead of it being delivered to you, you also have to pay through the nose for parking.

I see they want people not to pay by cash.  My local Rugby Club who I was planning on supporting this season just made everything cashless so I pulled subscriptions and explained why.  Making older people pay for stuff using a smartphone?  Are you really serious.  Smart Phones are an oxymoron as they aren't smart at all.  Poor arthritic fingers trying to establish accounts where long dialogue boxes need to be navigated, credit cards provided (if they even have them), data accounts for their phone and so on are just beyond the mindset of the average older person.  Me?  I've grown up with the sh1tty IT systems we have and none of them are fit for purpose.  The younger generation use their phones as credit card and the data companies know their location, spend patterns and so on.

Anyway, back to the politicians who are raiding our savings, our pensions and will shortly be raiding every working persons wages.  It's blatant in your face and hits the poorest the hardest.  These, the very people they say that they are going to look after and protect.  

We are no longer shocked when they lie to us, I am more shocked when anyone of them is sensible, logical, empathetic to the people they (after all purport to) serve and does what they say they will.  Not one of them has.  It's outrageous that they can get away with it but our MSM isn't remotely interested in it.  Shame on them, shame on them all.  I really hope that they will get their comeuppance.  In a very short time indeed, people can see what we've got and maybe it will finally shock them into realising that Socialism is not the answer.  When they take away your money from those who have paid into the system all their lives and give it to people who have no monetary input to this country or just line their own pockets then perhaps the penny will drop and people get angry.  Until then, we will just have to watch as they make raid after raid into our pockets and then spunk that money away into the blackholes they have and to their friend's bank accounts!

Sunday - Fun Day

 What a week it has been - found out that the guy on the bike had been taking Nitrous Oxide from a person (who may have been an undercover cop).  It makes them talk very loudly.  Anyway it pored down yesterday and so I guess they didn't come back albeit someone was talking very loudly at 3 am up the road last night.

Grandson was staying over - that's always a bit fraught as I end up sleeping in my comfy chair downstairs.

I'm going to head up for a shower in a minute as he's just gone home and peace has descended upon the household.

The business is about to kick into life as the test App is almost ready to go - only six years late!

I'm frantically working out my finances as two large bills have just hit together and in changing supplier I'll have to pay two lots of money for one month and then get some back after the transfer!

Oh well, I'm going to relax today and tomorrow is a Bank Holiday so hopefully another quiet day too. 

Top Trolling

 The energy price cap went up 10% not 8% and I'm glad I fixed the electricity when I did.  It adds around £150 average to most households.  So those of us who have had the £300 taken away for our fuel have to find around £450 over the winter.

In the meantime, Ed Milliband, the architect of all this "green" nonsense has flown to Brazil to give away more of our money for "Climate Change".  Top Trolling there then but not unexpected.  They really do spunk away the money in the billions. 

They are talking about making the pension means tested.  So after I've paid into the system for around 50 years so that they can pay me a pension, if I happen to have savings or made pension arrangements in addition, they want to rob me of the money I've paid in.  All the while the public sector workers have index linked pensions (paid for by the rest of us).  Surely they should give up their state pensions as they don't need two pensions?  But it is one rule for them and one for us.  

The general levels of ignorance in this country need to come to an end and the people be woken up and rage against the machine.  It's getting to a point where these people not elected by the majority are not doing their job - they haven't done that for half a century I think.  They interfere at a micro level, make decisions that only a cellar dwelling nerd would make and interfere in our lives.  They are meant to be our elected representatives and do our bidding.  

Oh well, I do hope that people wake up and start to push back against all of this.  But it must be done without hurty words and so on.  If you write hurty words you can go to prison displacing a felon who will be released back into society duly rehabilitated to become an upright member of society!  You can see the problems mounting and whilst it is slowly happening now, it can only get to a massive (not exponential) Tsunami at a later date.

Sod the Metropolitan Elite and them trying to lord it over me.  

Fed Up With Lying

I may have said this before but I am so fed up with people lying to me.  

 “We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Huge whopping lies too.  I hate being lied to and you can't question the lie can you?  "Denier!" they cry, "Bigot!" "Racist!" they shut down any dissent with force because they cannot actually defend, with logic, facts or data, their position.

I check what people are saying to me or what you see in the media and take it all with a pinch of salt.  It's all there to distract you anyway.  Nothing ever happens "Lessons will be learned" really, when has that EVER happened? "A full and frank discussion" you'll be lucky.  

Bread and circuses" (or bread and games; from Latin: panem et circenses) it's all to keep us distracted and in awe of the authorities.  Perhaps, just perhaps, people will start to question and push back.  I'm not holding my breath though. 

Energy Costs

 Yesterday I fixed our electricity costs and did quite well with a 1 year fix that was almost the same as I'm paying now and less than the fix from my provider.  This morning OFGEM announced that the price cap will go up 10% on 1st October which is 2% more than I was thinking it would.

I think it adds about £150 to the bill for most average households.  Goodness knows what January's cap will come in at?

So for a Pensioner already losing £300 winter fuel allowance they now have to find that £300 and a further £150 to keep warm.  £450 it's around 3% of their income increase.  No one appears to have noticed that basics have almost doubled in the past 4 years.  Strange things like a pint of beer which will now set you back over £5 and closer to £6 for a pint (although you can find places that are cheaper if you look).  

Well, I hope that the "people" will start to wake up and get angry with all the politicians who've forced high prices on us when they could have actually done the opposite and made the country productive which would have generated their tax monies far more than this.  Who wants to run a business with energy prices so high?  It's like stamping on the brakes of the country doing exactly the opposite of what they need to do.

I hadn't realised that these Muppets were going to destroy the country this quickly.  

The Dwarf breathes so loud, we could have shot him in the dark.

 So it was in the Lord of The Rings Film:

Gimli : "Well, here's one Dwarf she won't ensnare so easily. I have the eyes of a hawk and the ears of a fox." Haldir : "The Dwarf breathes so loud, we could have shot him in the dark." 

Last night, we could hear someone talking loudly outside, "Yea Bro." this and "Yea Bro." that prattling on for about 20 minutes.  So much so that I actually went out of the house and to the field gate to see a young male with his motor scooter, leaning against the gate and fence.  I didn't say anything just gave him a hard stare as if to say "STFU Bro.!" 

He left a short while afterwards but he's in a private no through road and using his phone in that speaker mode they do these days holding the phone flat and extended out in the hand!  

I suppose at least he wasn't using it whilst driving his scooter as we saw in Taormina, Sicily, a few years ago, a young lady on her red scooter on the mountain road happily talking into her phone!  I'm surprised more people aren't killed, I've certainly had to emergency stop when people walk out in front of my car without bothering to look other than at their phone screen and also runners and cyclists with headphones on who cannot hear my noisy old Diesel SUV coming down the track at them.   

Funny old world isn't it?  I try not to look at my phone all day long.  Occasionally it distracts me though but the number of parents not looking after their children but rather glued to their phone screens is alarming.  We were at a child playing event on Monday and you are meant to supervise your children (grandchildren in our case).  The use of mobile phones for a photo or a video is fine and you can understand that but one group of women (for there were only two males in the activity rooms) huddled together and were sitting, chatting and using their phones and their children were freewheeling around the area unsupervised.  These are the sorts of people who would scream blue murder if their child was hurt or injured.  So it is outside on the roads and quite how more accidents don't happen I do not know.

I also like the looks you are given as you grind your car to a halt to ensure you don't crush their child under 2 tons of AWD SUV as if I was at fault!

Anyway, I digress.  So I hope this lad doesn't come along regularly.  We have some lads who can be heard but not always seen apart from the wisps of smoke from their joints who sit in a far corner of the field an hour or so before sunset but they aren't that loud or that frequent.  Sound travels in the countryside and some people having a party across the valley can be heard quite clearly by us hundreds of yards away.

There's Always Something For Me To Moan About

 It seems that, the older I get, the more people p1ss me off.  Honestly, if it isn't people tailgating me in a 20 mph zone, God only knows what their closing speed was when they arrived at my bumper and then waving their arms about FFS.  It's 20 mph for a reason it's the school holidays and perhaps it was only me that noticed the prams, mums and children either side of the narrow street with parked cars all over the place (despite there being plenty of off road parking).

The crazy roadworks, the above inflation pay rise for 6 million public sector workers.  How now 1 in 20 people in the country work for the NHS!  The 4th largest employer in the world!  Look it up I think it is the Chinese Red Army, Indian National Railways, Walmart and then the NHS!  

Then there's sending out money, just the £11 BN of it to fight climate change and lower the earth's temperature by 0.00000001 Degrees.  Tossers the lot of them and spunking what is it another £6 BN to the Ukraine War and then to stop using our own resources thereby becoming reliant on imports of fuel (because you still need the stuff) just as those producers are either embargoed or are about to have their own war sending prices up and holding us hostage to global price hikes and so on.  

Their actions have already doubled the prices of our gas, oil and electricity and then the crowning glory is to remove the fuel supplement for pensioners after you've doubled their costs.  Muppets!

This is the current state of our "leadership", they cannot work out how to balance the books, they currently have a £20 BN "Black Hole" in the finances and yet if they had a moratorium for just one year, they'd clear that down.  But they won't and don't get me started on the use of back-handers.  Sorry, I meant "Foreign Aid".  We joyfully spunk another huge amount to poor countries like Mexico, India and China, two of which have their own space race and are nuclear countries.  

What ever happened to sensible policies and sensible people?  The current lot are certainly losing the narrative and beginning to be exposed for the truly imbecilic people they are.  What happens now if you ask sensible questions is that you get called "Far Right" or "Bigots" or "Deniers" or even "Racists" none of which are exactly meant to enable discourse and grown up discussion and yet, I have seen grown people and friends of mine use these very words.  I was not allowed to have an opinion on Covid, Liz Truss, Brexit, Immigration, Ukraine and so on.  My stance on scientific data and analysis is, apparently, wrong.  The science "is settled", it cannot be tested or poked with a stick it cannot be proven or otherwise with experiment and if you dare suggest it can you come across raised voices and are actually shouted down or mobbed down.

Don't believe me?  Try and "discuss" in a meaningful way whether Lockdown was the correct policy or wow try Brexit especially if you were for it.  You would have thought I was a murderer of Salem Witch the way they behaved.  Yelling right in my face.  Hilariously, on one occasion, I apparently denied that a well known teaching Hospital in London was "overwhelmed" with Covid patients.  they were at 100% capacity in the Covid ward and when I pointed out that the ward in question held 42 patients out of the hundreds of beds actually on other wards I thought they were going to burst a blood vessel.

Where has reasoned argument, logical thinking, data driven analysis, proper scientific procedure and so on gone?  When I was training I could not take anything for granted.  I had to prove by experiment that electricity existed, I had to devise experiments and propose outcomes then test to see if my hypothesis worked or not.  If it didn't work, the hypothesis was incorrect and needed to be revisited.  That's how it works.  If you are just told something, how do you know it to be true?  So we were trained to work it out ourselves, although they didn't let us kill each other with massively high voltages!! LOL

So it is with many other thought processes.  Listen to someone about taxing the rich and the wealthy.  Some see it as a crime to be wealthy without thinking that the wealth may be the result of a huge business risk and that the wealth may generate other benefits like employment and so on.  They only look at one aspect.  Listen to the simplification of the Brexit argument and the for and against parties.  You can clearly hear that the remain argument centres only on what perceived benefits they see but I very much doubt any of them used these alleged benefits themselves.  I however did and worked in and around Paris and Brussels especially and elsewhere in Europe.  I stayed at a Hotel where parliamentary MEPs and also NATO personnel stayed.  I saw where our money went in terms of ensuring they were well fed, well watered and so on.  Chauffeured cars, expensive suites, there with their families and so on.

You cannot believe the money that was being spent, like water, the privilege, the pensions (do look into it), the other benefits of being in these positions and there I am listening to how we might have lost free movement and all that special trade blah blah.  The opportunities were that Brexit will benefit being a sovereign nation but who would have thought we had spineless, dickless, cowards of politicians who couldn't run a proverbial p1ss up in a brewery.  Surely we deserved some with real backbones not the Eels we have got.  

So something to moan about indeed.  Next we need to look at the Church of England, losing parishioners like the BBC is haemorrhaging licence holders.  Apparently they want to lose the word "Church" - I don't know who on Earth is running their marketing campaign but I'm pretty sure that the Holy Trinity are, like many of us, shaking their heads in disbelief and wondering what they did to deserve the appalling leadership (and I use that word in it widest sense) we now have.  Maybe we ought to change all the Churches to Mosques and have done with it.  

Incompetence - A New Way Of Running Everything

 Absolutely everything these days is run by incompetent people who suffer no punishment for being truly awful at their jobs.  

The trains had staff shortages because they didn't work out that in the summer time, staff go on holiday.  Once again thousands of people had their train journeys disrupted because no one planned for it.  The Port of Dover once again every July and August gets busy but do they add extra staff? No, of course they don't.  They implement a stacking system on the motorway which was hellish to drive through over the weekend.

Yesterday I checked the national roadworks database to see if my journey would be a problem. No, it states quite clearly that the road WILL BE CLOSED between 20:00 and 05:00 every night.  Lying scumbags, when I got there I had to detour down tiny country lanes.  On the way back I tried to follow the diversions but the roads were awful, tiny little roads and then we met a huge truck, luckily I could get into someone's driveway to get past.  Clearly someone was not paying attention because when I got past the truck I could see why.  The only other road you can possibly get to our place by was also closed off.  WHO in their right mind closes not one main road but also the only really wide enough road to take two lanes of traffic.

The Government are taking away £300 fuel allowance from pensioners.  I'm the only pensioner in the house and therefore the only one bringing in any money!  So not only is my income now taxed (oh yes, they increased the pension but not the tax allowances) so now what 10 million have to pay a couple of quid income tax each. Fuel has almost doubled in 4 years since they shut the world down.  Here's the fun part - I get around £12,600 a year. Last year I paid £1680 in electricity costs. £312 in Water costs, £2,000 or so in Heating Oil and Council Tax was £3,100 so around £7,092 went in bills before I look at transport, insurance, food and the like.  Those have to come out of the remaining £5,508  about £460 a month.  If I go anywhere near London's ULEZ zone that's £12.50 a day. It's about £50 a month I have to find for that.

When I worked out me pension and what I'd get of course I worked out what the £300 would be for. It comes in around the time that the Electricity bills go up.  They are due to go up around 10% in October and it just seems to me that there's something at play or these people truly are incompetent.  If you have a set amount to live on and then you take some of that away, what are you actually thinking?  You're not thinking at all.  The new Government have just made enemies with 10 million or around 15% of the population.  Many of whom are their supporters I feel, although probably not now.

The list of incompetent people and organisations appears to me to be growing daily.  With potential conflict looming in the Middle East we decide not to use our own natural resources but can now be held to ransom by importing them from the Middle East.   We could use Russian but hold on, there's a problem there right?

I have always felt sorry for people who self harm but for a Government to bring harm down on its people by myopic policy decisions in the hope of saving the planet by actions of less than 1% of global impact is self harm and potential suicide in the hope of virtue signalling how stupid they are at the cost of our industries and our personal safety.  

The way people behave, the way we are being governed is turning into a race to the bottom and once they've got there they're going to keeping digging.  

All the good meaning policies are obviously going to harm business and the people of this country and the people can see it but the "politicians" cannot.  I despair that these people are running us into the ground and are a high speed rail crash coming around the next bend.  It feels as if there is a ground swell of anger against these pointless, stupid ideas.  The "ruling class" believe that by calling us names and beating us down they will, like Winston Churchill's famous appeasement speech something along the lines of each appeaser feeds the crocodile in forlorn hope that they will be eaten last!  We shall see what happens, it feels like civil unrest might be coming if they punish the working classes and not only put up their taxes and withdraw their pensions but also raise their bills in the long term.  

Cacophony

 Our quiet, out of the way house, lies down a small private road, bridleway, footpath (that is how it is signposted) and you cannot get out of the other end unless you have a Fireman's key to get through the gate.  That part is more a green lane than a road.  Our lane has passing places only.  In terms of noise and rush hour we have a 7 to 8:20 am and 4 to 6 pm busy time, by that I mean that you can suddenly get three or four cars together going in or out of work for down past us is a farming contractors with tractors, trailers, logging, lawn mowing equipment etc.  During te rest of the day you'll be lucky to see a delivery van or the locals coming and going.  Sure we have some loud pricks, mainly the teenage boys impressing the girls (and not their parents) with the latest noisy exhaust or deafening stereo or whatever they have these days.  An occasional motorbike and that's about your lot.

Every now and then of course you'll hear work being undertaken by gardeners and odd job men but that's about it.  The Sheep are generally a bit bleaty but not overly so.  So why, dear reader am I telling you this?

Well the weekend was chaotic.  Whatever set the sheep off caused them to be bleating for hours at a time and almost non stop.  It happens of course, then the next door neighbour had someone in mowing their paddock, again not a problem but it was quite loud as it was a warm weekend the windows were open and so it just seemed a little more noisy than it has in the past.  However, the prize goes to our Combine Harvester(s) who were harvesting the corn fields at the back and to the side of us.  They don't hang about when the weather is good and the corn is ready and so Saturday and Saturday night, Sunday and Sunday night you could hear the whirr of farm machinery and of course, the dust they kick out deposits itself on the cars and got us all sneezing too.   I was trying to see the Perseids last night gone 10 O'clock and they were still at it, their headlights lighting up the sky a few fields away.  

Today we are back to blissful quiet, everyone has settled down and it is so hot the Sheep are probably just sitting in the shade as we are, I've barely heard them today.  

I imagine it will be the same next year as it was this and last.

I also have to remember that we will hear them when they plough and plant the fields next.  It's nice living here and you too quickly forget how peaceful it can be.  

They're Coming For Us

 I see that the liebor government are now thinking about taking away the elderly bus passes and also talk of charging National Insurance on pensions!  Not content with taking away the winter fuel payment of £300 they are now looking at ways to keep the elderly at home and without fuel.  There's an argument about means testing I guess but after paying in for 50 years to get possibly the worst pension in Europe, the fuel payment which was introduced for a reason and bus passes to assist in transport costs seem to be a petty swipe at us, old people!

Means testing is OK but can you imagine the cost of doing this for 10 million?  We don't get "paid" even the minimum wage, we are around £8K a year short of that and so to my mind, it's pretty much typical of this socialist near communist regime that they'd go for us.

A friend has written to his GP and asked that all of his normally bought over the counter drugs which are prescribed now be added to his prescription so that they can be sourced, free of charge, through that avenue citing, rightly so, that his winter fuel allowance has gone and he needs to find the money from somewhere.  A good call and perhaps something we should all do to buck the system.

Become ungovernable is the way forward.  We are pretty tolerant in the UK but cross us at your great peril.  I used to work for a business that required all purchases over a certain threshold to have three quotes, no matter if the customer had uniquely specified the equipment.  My colleague and I were spitting feathers that it was a huge waste of time and resources and that the other manufacturers quoting would not like wasting their time bidding against a specified item.  It was a lot of money even 35 years ago - around £200K.  A generator set so we came up with a plan.  We order a drum of diesel and then amended the order to include a generator.  That bypassed the system and we got our generator ordered and through "the system".  Sure we got told off for using "the system" but we did use the system!

So it should be from now forward that  we buck the system and make it more difficult to operate.  I like that the system will now have to tax me on my pension (oh yes my pension is taxable as it goes over the threshold).  I will certainly enjoy sending letters to our tax office for the £10 or £15 that may be needed.  Imagine that again 10 million people all start to flood the Tax office with paperwork - I mean we are so stupid we can't use smart phones and PCs can we?

It really is a joke but then again, those of us who have lived through a socialist government before know what an utter mess they made last time.  They do actually look a little scared and they are knee jerking already.  When they start to pick up the angry vibes of the masses I imagine they will become very scared indeed.  Of course, it requires the great unwashed to actually wake up and make themselves a nuisance.  

Add to this that we soon won't be allowed to outline our outrage in the traditional free speech way we are used to, I imagine stuff will go underground and then they really should fear the people.  They aren't frightened enough yet but keep taking away the money that honest people earn and keep giving it away to those who don't work for a living and let's see where that leads them.  If you rob Peter to pay Paul you will always get Paul's vote as the saying goes.  If enough Peter's decide that isn't going to happen well, hold on to your hats folks. 

No Alcohol Progress

 I'm pleasantly surprised that it's been just over a month and I feel fine, I've lost some weight and after the first few days which weren't really a struggle, more of a habit breaking time and a bit of Keto Flu as they call it when you ditch carbs, all is well.

Making sure I drink enough water is the main thing and I know I am as I measure that.  The weight has come off of my neck and face and my sides which is unusual it normally comes off my arms and sides and my face is normally last in the line.  I've lost some of the front muffin top and apart from my aching left hip, all is well.

I think the hip has come about as one of the under mattress slats had failed and sleeping there has just pushed my hip downwards.  I replaced the slat yesterday and whilst I can still feel it, it isn't as bad.

This week will be difficult to not drink as I have paid for Hospitality at a well known airshow and I'm taking the OH away to stay at a Hotel so if I can avoid it I will but there's beers included in my ticket so who knows how it will work out.  I am determined not to drink if at all possible only the odd social tipple.  There are plenty of Alcohol beers around these days - of course they are still carb heavy but if it is only very occasionally it shouldn't disrupt my diet too much.

Anyway, the main thing is it's OK and I estimate around 1 stone lost (around 6 kg).  I'm aiming for a lot more than that but it will take a long time I imagine.  

The Metropolitan Elite

 They try so hard to be knowledgeable about ordinary people's lives, the climate, the countryside and they fail spectacularly to comprehend life outside of their bubble and yet they do not appear to have the capacity or indeed the wit to come and find out for themselves the raw data, the reality if you will of whatever subject they happen to be spouting on about.

They, along with the feeders (bottom feeders in my opinion), will happily tell you how it is and because it is their notoriety their followers, sheep like, take up the mantra and act as if it is true.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I take nothing for the truth.  I was very lucky in that my lecturer when I was young challenged everything.  I worked in a business who's watchword was "Challenge Accepted Thinking" along with "Do The Right Thing".  My job, the more I think about it was not just Programme Management but actually data analysis, making sense of the actual data collected to make decisions on.

We live in a strange world where mediocre pop stars can be authorities on global climate patterns.  They can tell you all about how wonderful immigration is and how we are enriched from their security gated ivory towers.  These people don't live a life like us, the majority.  They live in a world of make believe, they are, first and foremost, actors and their job is to bring fantasies to life and pretend to be someone they are not.  Pop stars, presenters, narrators, actors and the other "Celebrities" or persons of notoriety as they should rightly be labelled are not scientists and indeed some scientists, historians and the like are not celebrities either.   

The law of unintended consequences is well applied to these people who never suffer the outcomes of their meddling, who don't appear to use their brain before the engaging their mouths.  Actors who think a man can become a woman and vice versa.  It reminds me of the Time Team archaeological programme when they used to dig up a skeleton after thousands of years in the ground.  Did they pronounce which one of the (I've forgotten how many there are now say 167) genders?  NO! Did that know what they identified as? NO! Indeed they'd look at the pelvic bones and say whether it was a man or woman based on the facts presented, both male and female skeletons are different because women can have children and are therefore physically capable of doing so and men cannot are likewise shaped in such a way as to make it impossible.

The animal charities aren't actually doing an awful lot for the countryside at all and certain carrion type birds are protected where they should not be.  Landowners and farmers who actually work the land are ignored and fashionable re-wilding is introduced where it shouldn't be.  Our council are happy not to cut verges and growth on roundabouts but you cannot see roadsigns, speeding traffic especially turning in and out of side roads where verges are growing above the height of the car windows.  Roundabouts with high growth means you cannot see the boy racers coming around until they are almost on you.  

Twenty MPH road speed limits are another crazy idea as my car wont do 20 unless it is in second gear.  It might judder along in third gear if I'm going downhill.  Now, I'm all for speed limits in the right places, controlled by timed lights - School times, Hospitals, perhaps high streets although I've never known one get up to that speed and certain residential roads.  Not trunk roads and main roads though.  I've had people overtake me when I'm following the speed limit and surely my car is spitting out more pollutants and not being efficient at 20?  It's designed to do 30 mph in 4th gear not 20 mph in 2nd.  Oh well.  Now they have the no idling in certain places.  My car has an auto system that turns the engine on and off (apparently).  I don't use it as it's highly likely that starting and stopping the engine spits more fumes out than idling?  I don't know if that is so but of course the other thing is that the cars systems run off the engine especially those like power steering and Air Con, Some cooling and so on.  I don't know what they are trying to achieve here?  

Lack of scientific data, other than that paid for by pressure groups seems to me to also be part of the game.  NOX levels in London for example and the ULEZ zones - it's a joke.  4000 lives will be save a year.  Now if it were true that 4000 people were dying because of NOX you'd have thought it would be well documented?  NO, only one person has died according to a Coroner from traffic fumes in the past 20 years.  It's just another tax on people and these fines, dressed up charges and so on are penalties imposed on ordinary people.  I've said it before that at some point in the future the people will have their say.  They aren't angry enough yet.  They are easily led and they take what the TV and Radio presenters scripts as gospel.  I wonder how they will feel when they find out they've been lied to and everything is found to be a way of making them poorer and the "elite" richer.  

Recent riots in the UK are not the way to go about showing anger at the "elite" for a number of things that are wrong.  Violence isn't how you get stuff done as the perpetrators are finding out.  What is different this time is the tone of the people and I can feel that those that are awake are beginning to get angry.  We just need all the sheep to wake up and think for themselves.   I'd be surprised if there isn't some sort of outcry after the October budget unless the Chancellor wakes up and smells the coffee.  We are already suffering high taxes, payments to pensioners are being withdrawn and energy prices are increasing.  There's talk of more taxation and we are already at levels not seen since WW2!! If that is so, then maybe the sheep will really wake up and get furious.  Energy costs have almost doubled since the scamdemic and with us now importing most of our energy and materials it cannot be long until the veil is pulled back and the wizard exposed for what it is! 

Getting Old

 I still find it hard to believe that I'm 67 and not 37!  I don't feel old in my head but my body, well, that's quite a different matter.  It reminds me all the time and thereby hangs the frustrating thing about getting old.

Recently the backs of my hands have been feeling a little tender not helped by Grandson 1 cracking his head against the back of my right hand!  Jeez did that hurt.  It's where countless cannulas have been inserted over the years (on both hands).  They tended to ask what hand towards the latter period but now the skin shows the scars of these insertions as do my arms. 

I damaged my knees when I was in my 30s playing cricket and they've never been the same since.  I had 6 weeks of barely being able to walk and had to have taxis to and from work!   SO now, if I do any heavy lifting or perhaps I'm working off of steps or ladders, I can really feel it not at the time but next day. If I remember I have knee braces and so that helps.

My back just gives me a bit of jip when I do silly things like lifting grandchildren, leaning out too far, lifting heavy stuff.  I have a back brace if I remember to use it.  At least I don't get the debilitating back pain but I know it is there.

My arms ache if I've done some heavy work so muscle relaxant for those.

My eyes are sensitive in Hay fever season but sometimes they just get weepy. I have heat mask and drops in case I need them albeit its not that often.

Lately my left hip has been giving me some problems - no idea why, perhaps creased bed sheets and lying on them, not sitting properly in my chair, who knows?

I don't get headaches, or very rarely and so that isn't a problem and I've had problems with my ears all my life but I live with that every day.

So there you have it, falling apart although I am pleased that I do not have anything more serious and I'm glad that the Bladder Cancer is behind me and I don't think about it much unless it comes up in conversation or some sort of reminder, normally someone I know who has cancer or knows someone who does.

I think I'm not ready to get old nor do I have the right attitude about it or am I doing things in retirement that I have the opportunity to do.  I'm working on that now.  I must do things and get out of the house more whilst I still have the energy to do so!

That Rare Feeling

That rare feeling is when you are unaware that it is or was a magical feeling.  Somehow you were connected to something much greater, you felt quite different.  It was probably fleeting, it was in my case but it is quite memorable and I can recollect these feelings in vivid recall.

I've probably mentioned the one that was the most powerful.  Eleven years ago I was head over heels in love with my "Angel" as I called her back then, she came in and out of my life in a way that altered much of how I was feeling and changed things around.  It was never to be, sadly for me I guess but the amazing summer of 2013 is vivid and whilst we only me a handful of times those moments were quite magical as were some of the experiences.  

We met at a location where there was a "secret" walled garden with a pond nearby and we sat on a bench and so heightened were my senses that I could smell all the flowers, hear all the insects and we held on to each other in the softest way you could imagine.  Everything was right, the soft afternoon sun, there were very few other people about.  It was just the sun's warmth and the heady smell of the flowers, the buzz of insects and the wonderful person I was with.   I wrote a poem about it, it's in a special place stored away.

Whether or not it was a warm and sunny summer in 2013 I don't know but to me it was always warm and sunny and I spent a lot of time wandering across the fields and woods were I lived and everything was alive.  The wind rustled the Silver Birch trees and danced among the trees in the woods and when I got across into the golden cornfields, the pre-harvest heads were dancing in the breeze and it was like nothing else as I stood there, in the middle of all this corn with no one else around just me, the corn, the sun warming my body and the breeze making it all dance together and it was then that, once again, I was somewhere else, in tune with this landscape, at one with my surroundings and deeply connected to it.

When I was a young man and we had moved to Orpington / Petts Wood area I was walking toward home, from Petts Wood past the suburban houses and I was in Willett Way, I remember it most vividly when the sun again was warm and you could feel your whole body warm up but not humid hot or overly so just warm and comforting and it warmed your bones if you know what I mean?  The Privet Hedges were in bloom and I recall the smell of them as I walked past, the smell of other fragrant garden flowers as all the gardens were so well tended with bedding plants.  Again. it is only a momentary glimpse into something or somewhere else.  Somewhere where we should be more often, connected to out surroundings and at one with it.

There are a few other moments like these but they are few and far between and it's something we are all missing.  The trouble is you cannot find it by inquiring or reading books (although they can point you there I guess).  It's a case of feeling it and letting it take you over.  Being an INTJ does not lend itself to this sort of thing and trying to work out what is going on in a spreadsheet isn't going to help me.  I intend to try and be at one more often but planning to let it happen is not going to cut it.

So here's a little bit of the lost poem:

I walk through countryside and remember the warm summer heat,

I see her now in every whispered zephyr in the trees and branches,

The warmth on my face from the sun’s warming rays, 

The fragrance of a hidden garden and invisible breeze on the corn field dances.

The rest of the poem is ours and actually it's painful for me to read it now, gosh it opens me up to the world and not in a way that I'd be comfortable with?  It's private but it is emotionally deep for someone like me who doesn't normally display emotions.  

Old Friend - Reconnecting

 I noticed a post on LinkedIn and there was a name I knew and so I clicked through and realised it was who I thought it was and then checked my email address book and confirmed that it was correct and noticed the last time I wrote was 10 years ago just as I moved to my rented house and left my ex.

Gosh, ten years, where has that gone?  We've just exchanged a few emails and caught up.  Not the greatest of news on their side which is very sad I have to say.  It's been a sad week as my friend who fosters children has had the devastating news that their young charge is now terminal with leukaemia.  He wasn't given long around 9 years ago but he pulled through making what everyone predicted was a full recovery but it is back and he's not at all well.  My friends are wonderful people and no one deserves this.  Likewise my reconnected friend has similar trials and tribulations going on too.

How strange it was that when writing to my reconnected friend I had an ear worm rattling through my head and I recognized it as the first dance tune for their wedding where I was the DJ.  It's a lovely piece of music and I hadn't known of the artist until they requested it.  That was interesting that my connection was like that.  Interestingly I've know the person in question since we met on holiday in .... wait for it ..... 1977.  I went out with their friend, my first serious girlfriend.  

Lovely memories I think....